4 ms·

The american reliance on magstrips is crazy. Over here(Poland) I don't think I've seen a magstrip-compatible terminal for years, they just don't have the swipe

The american reliance on magstrips is crazy. Over here(Poland) I don't think I've seen a magstrip-compatible terminal for years, they just don't have the swipe part anymore, it's been removed from terminals and cash registers ages ago.

Scoundreller 4y ago
Are gift cards not a thing in Poland? How do they work? I have McDonald's gift cards in Canada, and I use the swipe for that.
- gambiting 4y ago
  They just have a chip like any other card? I bought a mastercard gift card some time ago and it just came with a pin. In fact I think gift cards don't even have a swipe part at all, and my own visa/mastercard cards still have it but I have it disabled through my online bank account - so I assume any magstrip transaction for those cards would be just rejected entirely.
  - lights0123 4y ago
    They’re talking about store-specific gift cards, not generic visa/Mastercard cards.
- j_jochem 4y ago
  All of the gift cards I’ve seen in the EU used barcodes, not mag stripes.
cbm-vic-20 4y ago
American here- most retail terminals here support NFC and chip- I haven't used magstrip in a retail environment for years- even mom-and-pop shops support NFC. Most gas stations accept chip, but not many accept NFC yet, though I'm seeing it more and more. Some gas stations still only accept magstrip. We still have the stupid policy in restaurants where you hand your card to the server and they walk away with it (their terminals are usually chip), which is something that a lot of foreigners freak out about.
- baal80spam 4y ago
  > We still have the stupid policy in restaurants where you hand your card to the server and they walk away with it (their terminals are usually chip), which is something that a lot of foreigners freak out about. And rightfully so! What is stopping them from copying the PAN, expiry date and CVV2? I wouldn't give my card to anyone - that's what portable (wifi/BT) terminals are for.
  - wiml 4y ago
    What stops a server with a good memory from looking at your card as they put it in their terminal and remembering it for the 30 seconds it takes to walk away and note it down? They already reliably remember fairly complicated table orders which have got to have more bits of entropy than a credit card number. Credit cards handle risk very differently than we do for account passwords. They expect numbers to leak regularly, but the downside of a leak is bounded in a way that password leaks often aren't, and the issuers and merchants eat those losses as a cost of business.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      Nothing stops them. It's just harder, so fewer people could do it.
    - frosted-flakes 4y ago
      Here in Canada, servers never touch your payment cards. They hand you the wireless card terminal and you insert it yourself. Or you pay on your way out at the front counter at a standard terminal. Even at drive-through restaurants, the cashier hands you the entire corded terminal through the window (well, most of the time contactless payments are used, in which case they simply hold it out for you to tap your card until they hear a beeeep). During Covid, most places mounted them on the end of a stick, and that practice has continued even once social distancing requirements were lifted.
    - twelvedogs 4y ago
      I use my phone it doesn't even show the number, but you can cover the number in case of random servers who can remember 16 digits effortlessly in 2 second No security is perfect but that's no reason to skip basic easy precautions
lxgr 4y ago
US merchants have widely accepted magnetic stripe card payments for many decades more than the rest of the world. It's a pretty typical example of a first-mover disadvantage: More legacy systems to deal with. That said, the switch to chip and contactless is happening pretty rapidly, in my experience, with an also entirely expected long tail of merchants that will probably hold on to their legacy POSes as long as technically possible.
atonse 4y ago
The US market has been historically different for other reasons. The big one is liability. In the US the cardholder is rarely liable for fraud charges. Which is why the minutiae of credit card security mechanisms just kind of doesn’t matter to us. But from my understanding, in Europe and places like India, the cardholder is usually liable. Which also explains why cardholders seem to be a lot more anxious about these things in those countries and don’t really understand how Americans don’t care too much, say, that a waiter can walk off with your credit card at a restaurant. Not claiming one system is better than the other… actually no, maybe I’m biased but I’m happy that the US system places liability on businesses rather than consumers. Which is why most US customers don’t care about these things and freely use their cards for everything.
- seszett 4y ago
  > in Europe and places like India, the cardholder is usually liable I suppose it depends on what you mean by "usually" but no, in the EU generally you just go to the police station which has a form for declaring credit card fraud and the bank often reimburses you before receiving it. Your replacement card is free on this situation. It is up to the bank to get their money back if they want to bother. I don't know of a situation where you wouldn't get reimbursed by your bank.
  - atonse 4y ago
    Ok that’s possible but still a pain in the butt to do. My point was mainly that technical differences don’t tell the whole story.
- kalleboo 4y ago
  The US market also has a lot higher margins to absorb any fraud - they have higher fees (since fees are capped to 0.2-0.3% in EU) and historically have had higher credit utilization. So they decided that "friction" costs more than fraud.
grishka 4y ago
In Russia no one swipes their cards, and swiping doesn't work if you try, but the terminals do have the swipe part and the cards do still come with magstripes. There's a separate magstripe reader, usually built into the cashier's monitor, at places that use magstripe cards for loyalty and gift cards.
- notpushkin 4y ago
  I'm wondering why they don't use the payment terminal's reader mode for this. I know it can be done – Rimi shops in Baltic states handle both magstripe and NFC loyalty cards through the terminal (just regular Ingenico ICTxxx line terminals, like many shops in Russia use).
  - grishka 4y ago
    I suspect this has to do with the POS software Russian stores use being inflexible or bank SDKs being restrictive. Probably the latter, as I've seen some kiosks that take card payments just pop up a Windows window with the Sberbank logo and transaction status instead of showing that in their own UI.
ferdek 4y ago
I have 2 gift cards and one additional "LunchPass" card issued this year in Poland, all three are magstrip only. The magstrip readers are not removed from the terminals, even the newest smartphone-like have them, you just don't know where to look. Of course, sometimes cashiers are surprised that my card is magstrip-only and they are double-surprised when I show them where is the magstrip reader on the terminal they use :)

Scoundreller 4y ago

Are gift cards not a thing in Poland? How do they work? I have McDonald's gift cards in Canada, and I use the swipe for that.

gambiting 4y ago
They just have a chip like any other card? I bought a mastercard gift card some time ago and it just came with a pin. In fact I think gift cards don't even have a swipe part at all, and my own visa/mastercard cards still have it but I have it disabled through my online bank account - so I assume any magstrip transaction for those cards would be just rejected entirely.
- lights0123 4y ago
  They’re talking about store-specific gift cards, not generic visa/Mastercard cards.
j_jochem 4y ago
All of the gift cards I’ve seen in the EU used barcodes, not mag stripes.

cbm-vic-20 4y ago

American here- most retail terminals here support NFC and chip- I haven't used magstrip in a retail environment for years- even mom-and-pop shops support NFC. Most gas stations accept chip, but not many accept NFC yet, though I'm seeing it more and more. Some gas stations still only accept magstrip. We still have the stupid policy in restaurants where you hand your card to the server and they walk away with it (their terminals are usually chip), which is something that a lot of foreigners freak out about.

baal80spam 4y ago
> We still have the stupid policy in restaurants where you hand your card to the server and they walk away with it (their terminals are usually chip), which is something that a lot of foreigners freak out about. And rightfully so! What is stopping them from copying the PAN, expiry date and CVV2? I wouldn't give my card to anyone - that's what portable (wifi/BT) terminals are for.
- wiml 4y ago
  What stops a server with a good memory from looking at your card as they put it in their terminal and remembering it for the 30 seconds it takes to walk away and note it down? They already reliably remember fairly complicated table orders which have got to have more bits of entropy than a credit card number. Credit cards handle risk very differently than we do for account passwords. They expect numbers to leak regularly, but the downside of a leak is bounded in a way that password leaks often aren't, and the issuers and merchants eat those losses as a cost of business.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Nothing stops them. It's just harder, so fewer people could do it.
  - frosted-flakes 4y ago
    Here in Canada, servers never touch your payment cards. They hand you the wireless card terminal and you insert it yourself. Or you pay on your way out at the front counter at a standard terminal. Even at drive-through restaurants, the cashier hands you the entire corded terminal through the window (well, most of the time contactless payments are used, in which case they simply hold it out for you to tap your card until they hear a beeeep). During Covid, most places mounted them on the end of a stick, and that practice has continued even once social distancing requirements were lifted.
  - twelvedogs 4y ago
    I use my phone it doesn't even show the number, but you can cover the number in case of random servers who can remember 16 digits effortlessly in 2 second No security is perfect but that's no reason to skip basic easy precautions

lxgr 4y ago

US merchants have widely accepted magnetic stripe card payments for many decades more than the rest of the world. It's a pretty typical example of a first-mover disadvantage: More legacy systems to deal with. That said, the switch to chip and contactless is happening pretty rapidly, in my experience, with an also entirely expected long tail of merchants that will probably hold on to their legacy POSes as long as technically possible.

atonse 4y ago

The US market has been historically different for other reasons. The big one is liability. In the US the cardholder is rarely liable for fraud charges. Which is why the minutiae of credit card security mechanisms just kind of doesn’t matter to us. But from my understanding, in Europe and places like India, the cardholder is usually liable. Which also explains why cardholders seem to be a lot more anxious about these things in those countries and don’t really understand how Americans don’t care too much, say, that a waiter can walk off with your credit card at a restaurant. Not claiming one system is better than the other… actually no, maybe I’m biased but I’m happy that the US system places liability on businesses rather than consumers. Which is why most US customers don’t care about these things and freely use their cards for everything.

seszett 4y ago
> in Europe and places like India, the cardholder is usually liable I suppose it depends on what you mean by "usually" but no, in the EU generally you just go to the police station which has a form for declaring credit card fraud and the bank often reimburses you before receiving it. Your replacement card is free on this situation. It is up to the bank to get their money back if they want to bother. I don't know of a situation where you wouldn't get reimbursed by your bank.
- atonse 4y ago
  Ok that’s possible but still a pain in the butt to do. My point was mainly that technical differences don’t tell the whole story.
kalleboo 4y ago
The US market also has a lot higher margins to absorb any fraud - they have higher fees (since fees are capped to 0.2-0.3% in EU) and historically have had higher credit utilization. So they decided that "friction" costs more than fraud.

grishka 4y ago

In Russia no one swipes their cards, and swiping doesn't work if you try, but the terminals do have the swipe part and the cards do still come with magstripes. There's a separate magstripe reader, usually built into the cashier's monitor, at places that use magstripe cards for loyalty and gift cards.

notpushkin 4y ago
I'm wondering why they don't use the payment terminal's reader mode for this. I know it can be done – Rimi shops in Baltic states handle both magstripe and NFC loyalty cards through the terminal (just regular Ingenico ICTxxx line terminals, like many shops in Russia use).
- grishka 4y ago
  I suspect this has to do with the POS software Russian stores use being inflexible or bank SDKs being restrictive. Probably the latter, as I've seen some kiosks that take card payments just pop up a Windows window with the Sberbank logo and transaction status instead of showing that in their own UI.

ferdek 4y ago

I have 2 gift cards and one additional "LunchPass" card issued this year in Poland, all three are magstrip only. The magstrip readers are not removed from the terminals, even the newest smartphone-like have them, you just don't know where to look. Of course, sometimes cashiers are surprised that my card is magstrip-only and they are double-surprised when I show them where is the magstrip reader on the terminal they use :)