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Chip payments remain awful. Mag stripe worked much, much better. Much cheaper "terminals". Could use in many more places. The awfulness of chip payments makes

by pbreit 3y ago

Chip payments remain awful. Mag stripe worked much, much better. Much cheaper "terminals". Could use in many more places. The awfulness of chip payments makes Apple Pay possible.

jackvalentine 3y ago
Australia went basically overnight from magstripe to chip and pin without issue. There was something uniquely awful about how the U.S. did it.
- mikepurvis 3y ago
  Canada also adopted it pretty quickly, years before the US. There was an extended period in there from around 2007 to 2020 where it felt like traveling back in time when I went to the US and it was magstripe and signatures again.
  - Freedom2 3y ago
    Don't forget about using cheques and having to use third-party applications for money transfer between people (Venmo, CashApp). Americans always seem to come up with an excuse for why they are slower, like a comment higher in this thread, despite the rest of the world moving on with more convenient and accessible technologies. Is it an overly defensive culture?
    - jackvalentine 3y ago
      Maybe it’s cognitive dissonance caused by nearly 80 years of ‘America is #1’ propaganda.
    - otterley 3y ago
      Massive installed base of older technology plus no financial incentives to update.
    - tallanvor 3y ago
      Do you really just use your bank's app to transfer money to anyone, though? Sure, here in Norway if I know their account number I can do that, but if I want to transfer money to a friend, I'm probably going to use Vipps because I only need to know their phone number. I consider Vipps to be a 3rd party app even though it's jointly owned by the major banks here. Every country is unique, but the financial system in the US is, as far as I can tell, quite unique, in large part due to how large the country is both in physical size and population, combined with a governing system that decentralizes a lot of power (which means some changes are much harder to mandate vs what China can decide to do, for example). You have to understand some of these foundational differences, after which it makes much more sense why some things move much more slowly in the US.
      - mikepurvis 3y ago
        In Canada, yes. But Canada does have a massive advantage that there are only five major banks who already cooperate over a shared debit infrastructure called Interac, so when email transfers (initially “certapay”) were introduced, there was already a logical body to do the coordinating. Smaller banks and credit unions have zero incentive not to participate in anything the big banks do since it will immediately put them behind 99% of Canadians.
      - notatoad 3y ago
        >Do you really just use your bank's app to transfer money to anyone, though? yes, in canada the process to transfer money to somebody is to go to the "e-transfer" section in your bank's app or website, enter the email address to send to and an amount, and hit send. you don't need to know account numbers or anything like that.
- notatoad 3y ago
  in most of the world, the credit card companies told vendors that they'd have to be liable for any fraud committed through payment terminals that hadn't been upgraded to chip and pin. so every vendor upgraded their terminals. in the US, credit card companies continued to accept liability for magstripe transactions up until a couple years ago. i think it was an attempt to hold onto their absurdly high market share in the US - most other countries have higher debit card usage.
janekm 3y ago
The chip and pin terminals are now cheaper than the magstripe ones ever were (about $60) and are accessible to many more businesses, even those that don’t have multi year trading history with their bank. It’s absurd to say they could be used in many more places… I literally do not carry cash for the last 6 years or so. Prior to chip&pin many small restaurants and cafes could not get a magstripe terminal from their bank. I’m curious what you mean by “worked better”? I haven’t used magstripe for a decade at least but can’t say I’m nostalgic for the experience.
- pbreit 3y ago
  Mag stripe readers are $1.

by pbreit 3y ago

Chip payments remain awful. Mag stripe worked much, much better. Much cheaper "terminals". Could use in many more places. The awfulness of chip payments makes Apple Pay possible.

jackvalentine 3y ago

Australia went basically overnight from magstripe to chip and pin without issue. There was something uniquely awful about how the U.S. did it.

mikepurvis 3y ago
Canada also adopted it pretty quickly, years before the US. There was an extended period in there from around 2007 to 2020 where it felt like traveling back in time when I went to the US and it was magstripe and signatures again.
- Freedom2 3y ago
  Don't forget about using cheques and having to use third-party applications for money transfer between people (Venmo, CashApp). Americans always seem to come up with an excuse for why they are slower, like a comment higher in this thread, despite the rest of the world moving on with more convenient and accessible technologies. Is it an overly defensive culture?
  - jackvalentine 3y ago
    Maybe it’s cognitive dissonance caused by nearly 80 years of ‘America is #1’ propaganda.
  - otterley 3y ago
    Massive installed base of older technology plus no financial incentives to update.
  - tallanvor 3y ago
    Do you really just use your bank's app to transfer money to anyone, though? Sure, here in Norway if I know their account number I can do that, but if I want to transfer money to a friend, I'm probably going to use Vipps because I only need to know their phone number. I consider Vipps to be a 3rd party app even though it's jointly owned by the major banks here. Every country is unique, but the financial system in the US is, as far as I can tell, quite unique, in large part due to how large the country is both in physical size and population, combined with a governing system that decentralizes a lot of power (which means some changes are much harder to mandate vs what China can decide to do, for example). You have to understand some of these foundational differences, after which it makes much more sense why some things move much more slowly in the US.
    - mikepurvis 3y ago
      In Canada, yes. But Canada does have a massive advantage that there are only five major banks who already cooperate over a shared debit infrastructure called Interac, so when email transfers (initially “certapay”) were introduced, there was already a logical body to do the coordinating. Smaller banks and credit unions have zero incentive not to participate in anything the big banks do since it will immediately put them behind 99% of Canadians.
    - notatoad 3y ago
      >Do you really just use your bank's app to transfer money to anyone, though? yes, in canada the process to transfer money to somebody is to go to the "e-transfer" section in your bank's app or website, enter the email address to send to and an amount, and hit send. you don't need to know account numbers or anything like that.
notatoad 3y ago
in most of the world, the credit card companies told vendors that they'd have to be liable for any fraud committed through payment terminals that hadn't been upgraded to chip and pin. so every vendor upgraded their terminals. in the US, credit card companies continued to accept liability for magstripe transactions up until a couple years ago. i think it was an attempt to hold onto their absurdly high market share in the US - most other countries have higher debit card usage.

janekm 3y ago

The chip and pin terminals are now cheaper than the magstripe ones ever were (about $60) and are accessible to many more businesses, even those that don’t have multi year trading history with their bank. It’s absurd to say they could be used in many more places… I literally do not carry cash for the last 6 years or so. Prior to chip&pin many small restaurants and cafes could not get a magstripe terminal from their bank. I’m curious what you mean by “worked better”? I haven’t used magstripe for a decade at least but can’t say I’m nostalgic for the experience.

pbreit 3y ago
Mag stripe readers are $1.