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An honest question: why would the cost of chip processing be prohibitive and the speed of chip processing be 30 seconds of waiting in the US, when its essential

An honest question: why would the cost of chip processing be prohibitive and the speed of chip processing be 30 seconds of waiting in the US, when its essentially rolled out en-mass in AUS and neither of those things (appear) to applicable, or at the very least they haven't stopped mass adoption? It certainly doesn't take 30 seconds of waiting to tap and pay here...

lb1lf 8y ago
Same goes for Norway; swiping is just a fallback measure if the chip is unreadable; you then have to sign at the register and your signature is supposed to be compared to the one on your card. Transaction (be it chip or swipe) is approved in a couple of seconds. The last couple of years, we've had cards fitted with NFC, too - so if the terminal is compatible, no need to type the PIN code, either - just put the card next to the terminal, done. (This only works for smaller charges - less than $65-ish, methinks - and every now and then you're asked to type your PIN anyway.)
- Accacin 8y ago
  Here in the UK too we have the NFC thing and we call it 'contactless'. It works well, but the limit is £30 at the moment, although that's slowly increasing by about £5 per year. It's really popular now, all my cards and even my credit card come with it, so some people aren't happy about that naturally, although personally I've never had any problems.
  - hvidgaard 8y ago
    Contactless is a really convenient technilogy. I use it all the time, to the point where I actively have to think about what my PIN is when it inevitably asks for it.
Rjevski 8y ago
Probably because most US transactions are still done offline, so when an online EMV transaction is attempted the terminal has to bring up its network interface, obtain an IP, etc. Here in the UK pretty much all terminals are always online and so EMV transactions only take a couple of seconds to authorise.
- gergles 8y ago
  Reverse that. The US has always had online terminals because we didn't get EMV initially. Taking impressions and filling out charge slips was 'online' (call the auth center,) swipe transactions were online, and then we just do EMV online too since every credit card terminal in the country was already online. In Europe where EMV was first introduced, offline transaction processing was extremely common because there had been no reason to put terminals online prior to the EMV rollout and merchants did what merchants do and whined about the cost of acquiring telecom, so offline mode was required in Europe. I have literally never seen a fully offline transaction in the US (in fact, very few US cards even ship the certs necessary to conduct offline transactions), but several of them in Europe and the UK as recently as last year.

lb1lf 8y ago

Same goes for Norway; swiping is just a fallback measure if the chip is unreadable; you then have to sign at the register and your signature is supposed to be compared to the one on your card. Transaction (be it chip or swipe) is approved in a couple of seconds. The last couple of years, we've had cards fitted with NFC, too - so if the terminal is compatible, no need to type the PIN code, either - just put the card next to the terminal, done. (This only works for smaller charges - less than $65-ish, methinks - and every now and then you're asked to type your PIN anyway.)

Accacin 8y ago
Here in the UK too we have the NFC thing and we call it 'contactless'. It works well, but the limit is £30 at the moment, although that's slowly increasing by about £5 per year. It's really popular now, all my cards and even my credit card come with it, so some people aren't happy about that naturally, although personally I've never had any problems.
- hvidgaard 8y ago
  Contactless is a really convenient technilogy. I use it all the time, to the point where I actively have to think about what my PIN is when it inevitably asks for it.

Rjevski 8y ago

Probably because most US transactions are still done offline, so when an online EMV transaction is attempted the terminal has to bring up its network interface, obtain an IP, etc. Here in the UK pretty much all terminals are always online and so EMV transactions only take a couple of seconds to authorise.

gergles 8y ago
Reverse that. The US has always had online terminals because we didn't get EMV initially. Taking impressions and filling out charge slips was 'online' (call the auth center,) swipe transactions were online, and then we just do EMV online too since every credit card terminal in the country was already online. In Europe where EMV was first introduced, offline transaction processing was extremely common because there had been no reason to put terminals online prior to the EMV rollout and merchants did what merchants do and whined about the cost of acquiring telecom, so offline mode was required in Europe. I have literally never seen a fully offline transaction in the US (in fact, very few US cards even ship the certs necessary to conduct offline transactions), but several of them in Europe and the UK as recently as last year.