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I will never understand why magstripe is still used in the US. Even after EMV became “mandatory” there are still magstripe transactions happening and when you a

I will never understand why magstripe is still used in the US. Even after EMV became “mandatory” there are still magstripe transactions happening and when you are presented sith a chip reader it’s slow and awkward. Why is it such an inferior experience compared to Europe?

abrowne 6y ago
My understanding for part of it is that magstip readers were much more common in the US, and businesses (a) didn't want to pay to upgrade all their terminals and (b) don't want to turn away a purchase because a customer doesn't have a chip or the chip isn't working.
- lsllc 6y ago
  That may have been the case, but pretty much everywhere I go stores have newer EMV capable terminals (e.g Ingenico etc). The only place I really use mag swipe now is a gas station pump (who have no excuse not to switch to contactless EMV). You'd think with COVID-19, there'd be a rush to move to contactless payments.
  - eli 6y ago
    A lot of people think COVID-19 is indeed the thing that will tip this into the mainstream default: https://www.bankingdive.com/news/will-covid-19-push-contactless-payments-into-the-mainstream/579579/ https://www.bankingdive.com/news/will-covid-19-push-contactl...
    - lsllc 6y ago
      I hope so. On a related note, I don't know if this is just me, but I literally have not used cash since March (although I keep hearing about a "coin shortage", perhaps this is people just not using coin anymore).
      - eli 6y ago
        Same. And yes, that's my understanding plus other factors: low usage of mass transit ticket machines and laundromats. Plus few people rolling coins and bringing them into a bank right now.
  - penagwin 6y ago
    Yeah I actually choose gas stations that support contact less payments. No card contact + one disposable glove is the way to go. Overkill.. Maybe? But it costs me nothing so I'll take the peice of mind.
    - bluntfang 6y ago
      I'm really not trying to be rude here, but a disposable plastic glove isn't a "cost nothing" scenario. Plastic pollution is bad. Climate change is real. Trash islands are real. Microplastics in the entire food chain is real. I admire your dedication to stay safe, and don't want you to stop feeling safe, but we must all begin to accept what we're doing to the environment.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        Understandable, but the cost to produce a glove is still very minor. And the way you solve pollution and microplastics from items in the trash can is by making sure that trash from cans is handled appropriately. Not by having consumers reduce their trash by a few percent. The climate damage is the only thing where you can really put responsibility on the consumer, and that can be fixed with a well-directed fraction of a penny.
        bluntfang 6y ago
        >the cost to produce a glove is still very minor. It's not about your individual glove. It's the 300million-ish people using 10 disposable gloves a day. >And the way you solve pollution and microplastics from items in the trash can is by making sure that trash from cans is handled appropriately. Not by having consumers reduce their trash by a few percent. How can you handle the level of trash we have responsibly? what's the plan? You seem to know, so please share it with the world so we can save the planet.
        penagwin 6y ago
        I totally understand your point about the environment. Given that I only fill my car once every 14 days, and only use 1 single glove for the hand touching the handle, I'm not overly concerned about the generated waste. Even if every American did this during the pandemic it would be dwarfed by the number of gloves used by hospitals even before covid. I certainly agree that plastic waste is a major issue, and I'll certainly re-evaluate my current method when we aren't mid pandemic, but I'm confident there's simpler ways to reduce plastic waste in more meaningful amounts. I'm pretty sure that I've removed more unnecessary packaging plastic from purchased goods in the past month then gloves I've personally used total this year (I dabble with stuff you want to wear gloves with).
  - blahyawnblah 6y ago
    Lots of gas stations do use the chip, but it's the same process of inserting the card.
    - jackson1442 6y ago
      Never been to a pump that uses chip personally, unless you pay inside. I've seen ~5 with a contactless tap point, but only got about 2 of them to work. This is in Texas, for reference.
    - lsllc 6y ago
      In New England, I've never seen anything other than a magstripe insert-remove type reader in a gas pump (although I think some do contactless EMV). FWIW, At least in MA, it's rare to see a gas pump older than 10 years -- I think due to both Federal and MA State UST laws that require fairly recent (e.g. 2019) minimum standards such as double walled, properly cathodized, leak detecting tanks along with subsidies for tank replacement that have resulted in pretty much every gas station around here being totally renovated in the past 5 years or so. https://www.mass.gov/guides/massdep-underground-storage-tank-ust-program https://www.mass.gov/guides/massdep-underground-storage-tank...
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    pretty much everywhere I go stores have newer EMV capable terminals Go more places. I know of a national restaurant chain and a regional coffee chain that are swipe only. Also, Lowe's was swipe only the last time I was in there, but that was a several months ago.
- ascorbic 6y ago
  Magstripe readers were ubiquitous in the UK 15 years ago. The banks started issuing chip and PIN cards and terminals, then did the liability shift a couple of years later. That shift is what's needed to make retailers switch, and is what still hasn't happened in the US.
jermaustin1 6y ago
What is crazier still, is I wasn't even sent a chip & pin from my bank until just last year. At least they did everything all at once, chip and contactless. But I'm still waiting for Capital One to send me a contactless card (its my preferred card to use internationally where contactless seems to be the standard).
- tialaramex 6y ago
  If you have a (modern, smart) phone you can teach the phone this Capital One card and it'll "be" that card contactlessly when you travel, one less thing to carry. I deliberately own (special ordered from my bank) a card that has no contactless, and it's also the card my phone "is" so all contactless transactions with that card are through the phone, the bank never issued a contactless card so it's literally impossible that the card itself was used for a contactless transaction. Using the phone this way allows me to walk around the supermarket, scanning product codes with the phone, then walk to the checkout, scan the "I'm done" code and hold the phone near the contactless checkout as payment. No human interaction, very little touching stuff, only need the phone which I'd carry anyway, no cards or cash.
  - jermaustin1 6y ago
    I actually had trouble the a year ago when traveling in the UK (I miss travelling), I was using my capital one through apple pay, but it would get declined constantly and shut off because the UK doesn't pass the CVV into the transaction. I never found a clear pattern for when fraud detection would occur, but one app that caused it constantly was Deliveroo.
- toast0 6y ago
  > At least they did everything all at once, chip and contactless. I got contactless cards about 10ish years ago, then when those renewed, it was back to stripe (and embossed) only; then chip and stripe and embossed; then chip and stripe but mostly flat; now this year I'm getting chip and stripe and contactless and apparently only Amex is embossing for carbon copy imprinters.
swimfar 6y ago
Because many consumers don't see chip and pin as an upgrade (though contactless is nice). So it depends on the banks to decide whether it's worth it. With debit cards, the extra security is valuable. But with credit cards it isn't really too important to me because I can just reverse fraudulant charges. As for the experience of using each, it seems to depend a lot on the machines. I did not like using chip and pin in Europe because it seemed to take longer and required more interactions. With the magstrip I pull the card out, swipe it, put it away. I'm never waiting for anything. Sometimes I'd have to swipe it twice, but that didn't happen too often to me. But it seems like different people have very different experiences with these things. edit: this mostly applies to credit cards, which are much more common in the US than in Europe. But the lack of significant benefit for credit cards to use this technology could have resulted in momentum that slowed the adoptation of it for debit cards.
llsf 6y ago
I was wondering too. But here in US the equation is bit different. The CC networks have already backed the cost of magstripe fraud in the business model. They convinced Americans to pay an elevated fee to balance the inevitable fraud induced by magstripe. Now, with EMV in theory the fees should drop as there is less fraud than with magstripe. Having magstripe around is a way to justify the fees. That is my understanding that it would be difficult now to explain to Americans that they paid elevated fees for so long to pay for fraud that was no fault on their own.
reaperducer 6y ago
Why is it such an inferior experience compared to Europe? Legacy hardware. Europe was late to the credit card game, so when it finally got on board it had newer gear. The Americans already had their stuff in place and it worked. Unlike computer nerds who will upgrade their computers just to feel current, businesses don't throw around money unless they have a very good reason.
- dathinab 6y ago
  I don't think so, as far as I know all "old" terminals had to be replaced or upgraded in the EU some years ago to comply with the new chip technology. Edit: so it's more about the willingness to require cost for upgrades then there being costs for upgrades, I thing.
  - watermelon0 6y ago
    Agreed. A few years ago NFC terminals weren't really popular around here, but nowadays it's hard to find a terminal without the support. I think this applies for quite a few EU countries. NFC technology is less secure, but every purchase above 25 EUR requires PIN verification, so there is a limit on how much can be stolen.
    - dathinab 6y ago
      Yes, even in Berlin you most times have NFC support if they support cart payment by now. And Berlin is probably one of the cities with the most "cash"-only shops/restaurants/bars/* in Germany and really no one expects you to have NFC support or card support at all (if you are a small shop/*). EDIT: Btw. they lifted that limit temporary to a much higher value (something >50€) so that less people have to touch the numpad when shopping (at least in/for larger grocery stores).
realusername 6y ago
I don't get it as well, I've never seen magstripe being used in person, this technology has been retired since the 90s in France at least. Magstripe tech sounds kind of VHS to me.

abrowne 6y ago

My understanding for part of it is that magstip readers were much more common in the US, and businesses (a) didn't want to pay to upgrade all their terminals and (b) don't want to turn away a purchase because a customer doesn't have a chip or the chip isn't working.

lsllc 6y ago
That may have been the case, but pretty much everywhere I go stores have newer EMV capable terminals (e.g Ingenico etc). The only place I really use mag swipe now is a gas station pump (who have no excuse not to switch to contactless EMV). You'd think with COVID-19, there'd be a rush to move to contactless payments.
- eli 6y ago
  A lot of people think COVID-19 is indeed the thing that will tip this into the mainstream default: https://www.bankingdive.com/news/will-covid-19-push-contactless-payments-into-the-mainstream/579579/ https://www.bankingdive.com/news/will-covid-19-push-contactl...
  - lsllc 6y ago
    I hope so. On a related note, I don't know if this is just me, but I literally have not used cash since March (although I keep hearing about a "coin shortage", perhaps this is people just not using coin anymore).
    - eli 6y ago
      Same. And yes, that's my understanding plus other factors: low usage of mass transit ticket machines and laundromats. Plus few people rolling coins and bringing them into a bank right now.
- penagwin 6y ago
  Yeah I actually choose gas stations that support contact less payments. No card contact + one disposable glove is the way to go. Overkill.. Maybe? But it costs me nothing so I'll take the peice of mind.
  - bluntfang 6y ago
    I'm really not trying to be rude here, but a disposable plastic glove isn't a "cost nothing" scenario. Plastic pollution is bad. Climate change is real. Trash islands are real. Microplastics in the entire food chain is real. I admire your dedication to stay safe, and don't want you to stop feeling safe, but we must all begin to accept what we're doing to the environment.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      Understandable, but the cost to produce a glove is still very minor. And the way you solve pollution and microplastics from items in the trash can is by making sure that trash from cans is handled appropriately. Not by having consumers reduce their trash by a few percent. The climate damage is the only thing where you can really put responsibility on the consumer, and that can be fixed with a well-directed fraction of a penny.
      - bluntfang 6y ago
        >the cost to produce a glove is still very minor. It's not about your individual glove. It's the 300million-ish people using 10 disposable gloves a day. >And the way you solve pollution and microplastics from items in the trash can is by making sure that trash from cans is handled appropriately. Not by having consumers reduce their trash by a few percent. How can you handle the level of trash we have responsibly? what's the plan? You seem to know, so please share it with the world so we can save the planet.
        penagwin 6y ago
        I totally understand your point about the environment. Given that I only fill my car once every 14 days, and only use 1 single glove for the hand touching the handle, I'm not overly concerned about the generated waste. Even if every American did this during the pandemic it would be dwarfed by the number of gloves used by hospitals even before covid. I certainly agree that plastic waste is a major issue, and I'll certainly re-evaluate my current method when we aren't mid pandemic, but I'm confident there's simpler ways to reduce plastic waste in more meaningful amounts. I'm pretty sure that I've removed more unnecessary packaging plastic from purchased goods in the past month then gloves I've personally used total this year (I dabble with stuff you want to wear gloves with).
- blahyawnblah 6y ago
  Lots of gas stations do use the chip, but it's the same process of inserting the card.
  - jackson1442 6y ago
    Never been to a pump that uses chip personally, unless you pay inside. I've seen ~5 with a contactless tap point, but only got about 2 of them to work. This is in Texas, for reference.
  - lsllc 6y ago
    In New England, I've never seen anything other than a magstripe insert-remove type reader in a gas pump (although I think some do contactless EMV). FWIW, At least in MA, it's rare to see a gas pump older than 10 years -- I think due to both Federal and MA State UST laws that require fairly recent (e.g. 2019) minimum standards such as double walled, properly cathodized, leak detecting tanks along with subsidies for tank replacement that have resulted in pretty much every gas station around here being totally renovated in the past 5 years or so. https://www.mass.gov/guides/massdep-underground-storage-tank-ust-program https://www.mass.gov/guides/massdep-underground-storage-tank...
- reaperducer 6y ago
  pretty much everywhere I go stores have newer EMV capable terminals Go more places. I know of a national restaurant chain and a regional coffee chain that are swipe only. Also, Lowe's was swipe only the last time I was in there, but that was a several months ago.
ascorbic 6y ago
Magstripe readers were ubiquitous in the UK 15 years ago. The banks started issuing chip and PIN cards and terminals, then did the liability shift a couple of years later. That shift is what's needed to make retailers switch, and is what still hasn't happened in the US.

jermaustin1 6y ago

What is crazier still, is I wasn't even sent a chip & pin from my bank until just last year. At least they did everything all at once, chip and contactless. But I'm still waiting for Capital One to send me a contactless card (its my preferred card to use internationally where contactless seems to be the standard).

tialaramex 6y ago
If you have a (modern, smart) phone you can teach the phone this Capital One card and it'll "be" that card contactlessly when you travel, one less thing to carry. I deliberately own (special ordered from my bank) a card that has no contactless, and it's also the card my phone "is" so all contactless transactions with that card are through the phone, the bank never issued a contactless card so it's literally impossible that the card itself was used for a contactless transaction. Using the phone this way allows me to walk around the supermarket, scanning product codes with the phone, then walk to the checkout, scan the "I'm done" code and hold the phone near the contactless checkout as payment. No human interaction, very little touching stuff, only need the phone which I'd carry anyway, no cards or cash.
- jermaustin1 6y ago
  I actually had trouble the a year ago when traveling in the UK (I miss travelling), I was using my capital one through apple pay, but it would get declined constantly and shut off because the UK doesn't pass the CVV into the transaction. I never found a clear pattern for when fraud detection would occur, but one app that caused it constantly was Deliveroo.
toast0 6y ago
> At least they did everything all at once, chip and contactless. I got contactless cards about 10ish years ago, then when those renewed, it was back to stripe (and embossed) only; then chip and stripe and embossed; then chip and stripe but mostly flat; now this year I'm getting chip and stripe and contactless and apparently only Amex is embossing for carbon copy imprinters.

swimfar 6y ago

Because many consumers don't see chip and pin as an upgrade (though contactless is nice). So it depends on the banks to decide whether it's worth it. With debit cards, the extra security is valuable. But with credit cards it isn't really too important to me because I can just reverse fraudulant charges. As for the experience of using each, it seems to depend a lot on the machines. I did not like using chip and pin in Europe because it seemed to take longer and required more interactions. With the magstrip I pull the card out, swipe it, put it away. I'm never waiting for anything. Sometimes I'd have to swipe it twice, but that didn't happen too often to me. But it seems like different people have very different experiences with these things. edit: this mostly applies to credit cards, which are much more common in the US than in Europe. But the lack of significant benefit for credit cards to use this technology could have resulted in momentum that slowed the adoptation of it for debit cards.

llsf 6y ago

I was wondering too. But here in US the equation is bit different. The CC networks have already backed the cost of magstripe fraud in the business model. They convinced Americans to pay an elevated fee to balance the inevitable fraud induced by magstripe. Now, with EMV in theory the fees should drop as there is less fraud than with magstripe. Having magstripe around is a way to justify the fees. That is my understanding that it would be difficult now to explain to Americans that they paid elevated fees for so long to pay for fraud that was no fault on their own.

reaperducer 6y ago

Why is it such an inferior experience compared to Europe? Legacy hardware. Europe was late to the credit card game, so when it finally got on board it had newer gear. The Americans already had their stuff in place and it worked. Unlike computer nerds who will upgrade their computers just to feel current, businesses don't throw around money unless they have a very good reason.

dathinab 6y ago
I don't think so, as far as I know all "old" terminals had to be replaced or upgraded in the EU some years ago to comply with the new chip technology. Edit: so it's more about the willingness to require cost for upgrades then there being costs for upgrades, I thing.
- watermelon0 6y ago
  Agreed. A few years ago NFC terminals weren't really popular around here, but nowadays it's hard to find a terminal without the support. I think this applies for quite a few EU countries. NFC technology is less secure, but every purchase above 25 EUR requires PIN verification, so there is a limit on how much can be stolen.
  - dathinab 6y ago
    Yes, even in Berlin you most times have NFC support if they support cart payment by now. And Berlin is probably one of the cities with the most "cash"-only shops/restaurants/bars/* in Germany and really no one expects you to have NFC support or card support at all (if you are a small shop/*). EDIT: Btw. they lifted that limit temporary to a much higher value (something >50€) so that less people have to touch the numpad when shopping (at least in/for larger grocery stores).

realusername 6y ago

I don't get it as well, I've never seen magstripe being used in person, this technology has been retired since the 90s in France at least. Magstripe tech sounds kind of VHS to me.