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I was into bitcoin for method of payment purposes very very early (I think it was 10 cents when I played with it). Never held it though or made money using it.

I was into bitcoin for method of payment purposes very very early (I think it was 10 cents when I played with it). Never held it though or made money using it. Even before bitcoin some folks might remember digicash - I was into that, but it never went anywhere either. I'm a sci-fi reader. It seems to me that digital cash has utility. I've gone to Apple Pay wherever possible, my only wish was that apple pay would have taken out Visa and Mastercard with a direct offering with much lower fees. On merchant side there are still ripoffs - a lot of ACH processing fees are absurd (1% - no cap on amounts etc - so you end up at $100/transaction if you do a $10,000 transaction through certain platforms) and there is no way in person trx have enough fraud to justify the 2.x%. charged there. Chip and pin would solve the issue there anyways but for whatever reason has not been adopted in US.

arcticbull 4y ago
> Chip and pin would solve the issue there anyways but for whatever reason has not been adopted in US. Can speak to this. Historically the US has been reluctant to adopt CVM PIN because of the extra transaction time. A CVM Signature transaction (or even a CVM None) takes 1-2 seconds. Asking someone to enter their PIN takes an additional 10-20 seconds. A full order of magnitude longer. For places like McDonalds, this was a non-starter. It's even fairly painful in the countries where it has been adopted. The solution in both markets was to move to contactless EMV cards and especially to contactless-enabled mobile wallets. You get the best of both worlds with mobile wallets: low transaction times and low fraud risk. The interchange rate you're referencing (2.x%) isn't due to fraud risk really, it's used to fund the cost of reward programs. The EU just doesn't have nearly the same kinds of cash-back or frequent flyer program type cards - which just cannot be funded by the regulated 0.3% interchange cap.
- onphonenow 4y ago
  What confuses me in all this is just that when I pay with a chip + signature, I have to insert my card AND LEAVE IT IN for something like 10-20 seconds until the beep beep beep of death. With my apple device, I touch the terminal, and its basically instant. In other words, the bandwidth sticking my card INTO the device (plus whatever time it takes to do some calcs on device) is something like 2,000 times slower over a wired connection then my iphone does over wireless. There is some failure in the current CVM implementation in the US because this makes no logical sense at all. About half the chip terminals have to put big stickers on about LEAVING card inserted until told to remove. We've gone backwards from mag stripe here which despite being supposedly inferior was definitely a lot faster.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    > What confuses me in all this is just that when I pay with a chip + signature, I have to insert my card AND LEAVE IT IN for something like 10-20 seconds until the beep beep beep of death. This depends on the terminal and the EMV kernel. The fastest possible signature transaction is about 1-2 seconds, including powering up the card. Some implementations are just not particularly optimized. Some will perform 'full EMV' transactions which require two round trips from the card to the issuer and may actually run scripts sent by the issuer on your card before you can remove it. A properly optimized solution in the US will use 'quick EMV' where the card is only required to be in the reader until just after the authorization request cryptogram is generated - before its even sent up to the payment network. [1, p.9] > With my apple device, I touch the terminal, and its basically instant. Indeed! Contactless transactions are modeled basically like quick EMV transactions and the whole system was brought in because contact PIN EMV was too slow. > In other words, the bandwidth sticking my card INTO the device (plus whatever time it takes to do some calcs on device) is something like 2,000 times slower over a wired connection then my iphone does over wireless. It does take a couple hundred ms for a smart card to boot up. Like-for-like you'd have to compare enabling Apple Pay or Google Pay and entering your PIN or capturing your face. > There is some failure in the current CVM implementation in the US because this makes no logical sense at all. Hope the above helped clarify! > About half the chip terminals have to put big stickers on about LEAVING card inserted until told to remove. We've gone backwards from mag stripe here which despite being supposedly inferior was definitely a lot faster. Yeah, I do agree - but that's also why the US was the last to the party! Low fraud rate, and large transaction duration costs. [1] https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/regional/na/us/run-your-business/documents/quick-chip-emv-specification.pdf https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/regional/na/us/run-you...
anon291 4y ago
> It seems to me that digital cash has utility Digital cash has great utility, but decentralization of digital cash has marginal utility over centralized alternatives. In particular, physical cash is centralized and is just as useful as decentralized fiat.
- onphonenow 4y ago
  I'm not against centralization. At least for smaller purchases, I do like some of the privacy elements of some digital cash solutions. It sometimes feels like the temptation with centralized solutions given storage is cheap and the fraud and other arguments are strong is to avoid any privacy elements at all.

arcticbull 4y ago

> Chip and pin would solve the issue there anyways but for whatever reason has not been adopted in US. Can speak to this. Historically the US has been reluctant to adopt CVM PIN because of the extra transaction time. A CVM Signature transaction (or even a CVM None) takes 1-2 seconds. Asking someone to enter their PIN takes an additional 10-20 seconds. A full order of magnitude longer. For places like McDonalds, this was a non-starter. It's even fairly painful in the countries where it has been adopted. The solution in both markets was to move to contactless EMV cards and especially to contactless-enabled mobile wallets. You get the best of both worlds with mobile wallets: low transaction times and low fraud risk. The interchange rate you're referencing (2.x%) isn't due to fraud risk really, it's used to fund the cost of reward programs. The EU just doesn't have nearly the same kinds of cash-back or frequent flyer program type cards - which just cannot be funded by the regulated 0.3% interchange cap.

onphonenow 4y ago
What confuses me in all this is just that when I pay with a chip + signature, I have to insert my card AND LEAVE IT IN for something like 10-20 seconds until the beep beep beep of death. With my apple device, I touch the terminal, and its basically instant. In other words, the bandwidth sticking my card INTO the device (plus whatever time it takes to do some calcs on device) is something like 2,000 times slower over a wired connection then my iphone does over wireless. There is some failure in the current CVM implementation in the US because this makes no logical sense at all. About half the chip terminals have to put big stickers on about LEAVING card inserted until told to remove. We've gone backwards from mag stripe here which despite being supposedly inferior was definitely a lot faster.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  > What confuses me in all this is just that when I pay with a chip + signature, I have to insert my card AND LEAVE IT IN for something like 10-20 seconds until the beep beep beep of death. This depends on the terminal and the EMV kernel. The fastest possible signature transaction is about 1-2 seconds, including powering up the card. Some implementations are just not particularly optimized. Some will perform 'full EMV' transactions which require two round trips from the card to the issuer and may actually run scripts sent by the issuer on your card before you can remove it. A properly optimized solution in the US will use 'quick EMV' where the card is only required to be in the reader until just after the authorization request cryptogram is generated - before its even sent up to the payment network. [1, p.9] > With my apple device, I touch the terminal, and its basically instant. Indeed! Contactless transactions are modeled basically like quick EMV transactions and the whole system was brought in because contact PIN EMV was too slow. > In other words, the bandwidth sticking my card INTO the device (plus whatever time it takes to do some calcs on device) is something like 2,000 times slower over a wired connection then my iphone does over wireless. It does take a couple hundred ms for a smart card to boot up. Like-for-like you'd have to compare enabling Apple Pay or Google Pay and entering your PIN or capturing your face. > There is some failure in the current CVM implementation in the US because this makes no logical sense at all. Hope the above helped clarify! > About half the chip terminals have to put big stickers on about LEAVING card inserted until told to remove. We've gone backwards from mag stripe here which despite being supposedly inferior was definitely a lot faster. Yeah, I do agree - but that's also why the US was the last to the party! Low fraud rate, and large transaction duration costs. [1] https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/regional/na/us/run-your-business/documents/quick-chip-emv-specification.pdf https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/regional/na/us/run-you...

anon291 4y ago

> It seems to me that digital cash has utility Digital cash has great utility, but decentralization of digital cash has marginal utility over centralized alternatives. In particular, physical cash is centralized and is just as useful as decentralized fiat.

onphonenow 4y ago
I'm not against centralization. At least for smaller purchases, I do like some of the privacy elements of some digital cash solutions. It sometimes feels like the temptation with centralized solutions given storage is cheap and the fraud and other arguments are strong is to avoid any privacy elements at all.