4 ms·
> Contactless is very hit-or-miss for me in the US; about 1/3 the time it just doesn't work at all That's a shockingly high number. I'm in Canada, and I'd take
by gregmac 5y ago
> Contactless is very hit-or-miss for me in the US; about 1/3 the time it just doesn't work at all
That's a shockingly high number. I'm in Canada, and I'd take a rough guess that maybe 1-2% of taps fail on first try. Most of the time it works on a second try -- and I actually think that usually happens when the POS system is slow and you tap too early.
And in cases where it really is just not working, the fallback is chip + PIN, which is 100% success rate. I'm sure there's cases where a card gets damaged and it wouldn't work, but it's not like the magnetic strip will survive that.
I don't think I've used the actual magnetic strip in at least a decade, except when I've been travelling in the US.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoI am in the US and I have been using tap to pay for a few years now with consistent success. And as you wrote, if it does not, you just insert the chip. But that seems rare.
- nulbyte 5y agoI've come across a few places that accept contactless, but specifically reject Google and Apple Pay, and until recently, none of my cards had contactless built in, so Google Pay was the only way to do contactless. But, I have a Samsung phone with MST, so I can fake a swipe. Amusingly, the terminals that won't do contactless Google Pay happily accept the same with the magnetic reader.