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Around 25 years ago I worked the PoS at a retail establishment. We ran all credit card payments using a machine that would dial-up our payment processor for eac

by c22 2y ago

Around 25 years ago I worked the PoS at a retail establishment. We ran all credit card payments using a machine that would dial-up our payment processor for each transaction. It used the same line as the fax, so if we were receiving or sending a many-page fax this operation would fail. Sometimes it failed for other reasons. As a backup we had the old carbon slips that went into a plastic rig and made an impression of the customer's card. We also had a printed out sales tax table and some more carbon slips we could use to hand-write a receipt. I had to resort to the paper based system on many occasions. A few years back I was in a store shopping when the power went out. The staff didn't know what to do and closed the store early. They had no way to sell me the items in my basket. I asked if they could take an impression of my card and got met with blank stares. They couldn't even take cash because they didn't know how to calculate the total amount, had nothing to write a receipt on, and their cash drawers wouldn't open anyway. Nowadays credit cards don't even come with raised numbers...

guerrilla 2y ago
> Nowadays credit cards don't even come with raised numbers... So that's what the raised numbers were for. I just got my first card without raised numbers last January. It still feels fake and "insecure" to me, even though I know better. Funny how things work.
- diggan 2y ago
  My latest card doesn't even have the card number, expiry or CVC printed on it at all. And besides that, the CVC code is dynamically generated every time I need it, it doesn't even have a static CVC. Seems relatively new, as some people look at funnily when I hand it over when they need it for "deposits" or whatever.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Apple Card, by any chance? I've always wondered how that works for businesses that still prefer to compare the last four digits of a physical card with those of a booking made online, like some hotels or airlines still do.
    - diggan 2y ago
      Nope, a physical card from BBVA. I tend to use banks for my financial needs ;) So far, they've looked at me strangely, fetched a superior who either says "whatever" or they run through the card through their reader to get the last four. Seems to work out well enough at least.
      - lxgr 2y ago
        Don't worry, the Apple card is issued by a bank too, not Apple. Running it through a reader would also not work – the number on the chip and magnetic stripe is different from the one you see in the app and use for online payments. That's why I'd rather not use it for a hotel or international airline booking, for example (some still have "you must have the physical card with you to be allowed to board" in their terms and conditions, although nobody has ever requested to see mine in practice). Do you know if your last four digits (that are printed on receipts too) match those you can see in the app?
        diggan 2y ago
        > Don't worry, the Apple card is issued by a bank too, not Apple. Ah, first time I heard about it, seems to not be available outside the US so that explains it :) > Do you know if your last four digits (that are printed on receipts too) match those you can see in the app? Yes, it does. It also matches with whatever they see when they run the card, however they do that. The card number is identical for online payments, "offline" payments (with terminals) and what I see in my banking application. The only thing that changes is the CVC, as it rotates every ~6 minutes or so.
card_zero 2y ago
Your purchase that day: eggs. In several different baskets.
jghn 2y ago
> The staff didn't know what to do and closed the store early. This was literally a bit in the Y2K episode of King of the Hill. Hank goes to buy a new "Y2K compliant" computer. The cashier couldn't ring him up and freaks out.
TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
All my payment cards have raised numbers. And I saw an old card imprint thingo at an op shop (thrift store), slight rusty but seemed to still seemed to work.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Interesting, would you mind sharing what country that is? I have only a single card with raised/embossed numbers, and that's somewhat ironically a pre-tax transit benefit card, i.e. the least likely of any I own to ever be used in a carbon imprinter.
  - vladvasiliu 2y ago
    In France, all my credit cards except the very last one have raised numbers. The last one with raised numbers was delivered to me in 2024. The one without came a few months later, from the same bank. It also has the number on the back, right next to the static CVC. I guess security is indeed their top priority. Anecdotally, all the credit cards I've had started to have the paint rub off the embossed number fairly quickly, rendering it very difficult to read. The other text on them didn't have this issue.
    - lxgr 2y ago
      Most of my cards look like that these days. Arguably it's a wash for security: Yes, you can take a single photo of all the card details if the CVC is on the same side as the number and expiry, but on the other hand, there's nothing of value on the front now, which helps with people taking photos of their cards and posting them on social media. And I agree, the paint rubbing off is extremely annoying, and even worse when it's metallic paint, flakes of which have a habit of deeply embedding themselves in all kinds of leather and fabric materials. That, and the fact that you can't fit as many of them in a "card-only wallet", makes me not want to carry any of them anymore.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
    Australia, info in profile
lxgr 2y ago
Because credit card fraud has had a few decades to evolve too, and is now orders of magnitudes more easy to coordinate. If word gets out that a given store has no online processing and is accepting carbon slips again, you can bet that quite a few people with stashes of stolen/closed credit cards will show up and start buying the most expensive items in the store. The modern equivalent would be offline chip processing. That is actually capable of at least ensuring that a given card is not heavily overdrawn or outright forged. Still, even that is unfortunately being scaled back significantly, given that "everything is always online anyway, so why do we need it?"

by c22 2y ago

guerrilla 2y ago

> Nowadays credit cards don't even come with raised numbers... So that's what the raised numbers were for. I just got my first card without raised numbers last January. It still feels fake and "insecure" to me, even though I know better. Funny how things work.

diggan 2y ago
My latest card doesn't even have the card number, expiry or CVC printed on it at all. And besides that, the CVC code is dynamically generated every time I need it, it doesn't even have a static CVC. Seems relatively new, as some people look at funnily when I hand it over when they need it for "deposits" or whatever.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Apple Card, by any chance? I've always wondered how that works for businesses that still prefer to compare the last four digits of a physical card with those of a booking made online, like some hotels or airlines still do.
  - diggan 2y ago
    Nope, a physical card from BBVA. I tend to use banks for my financial needs ;) So far, they've looked at me strangely, fetched a superior who either says "whatever" or they run through the card through their reader to get the last four. Seems to work out well enough at least.
    - lxgr 2y ago
      Don't worry, the Apple card is issued by a bank too, not Apple. Running it through a reader would also not work – the number on the chip and magnetic stripe is different from the one you see in the app and use for online payments. That's why I'd rather not use it for a hotel or international airline booking, for example (some still have "you must have the physical card with you to be allowed to board" in their terms and conditions, although nobody has ever requested to see mine in practice). Do you know if your last four digits (that are printed on receipts too) match those you can see in the app?
      - diggan 2y ago
        > Don't worry, the Apple card is issued by a bank too, not Apple. Ah, first time I heard about it, seems to not be available outside the US so that explains it :) > Do you know if your last four digits (that are printed on receipts too) match those you can see in the app? Yes, it does. It also matches with whatever they see when they run the card, however they do that. The card number is identical for online payments, "offline" payments (with terminals) and what I see in my banking application. The only thing that changes is the CVC, as it rotates every ~6 minutes or so.

card_zero 2y ago

Your purchase that day: eggs. In several different baskets.

jghn 2y ago

> The staff didn't know what to do and closed the store early. This was literally a bit in the Y2K episode of King of the Hill. Hank goes to buy a new "Y2K compliant" computer. The cashier couldn't ring him up and freaks out.

TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago

All my payment cards have raised numbers. And I saw an old card imprint thingo at an op shop (thrift store), slight rusty but seemed to still seemed to work.

lxgr 2y ago
Interesting, would you mind sharing what country that is? I have only a single card with raised/embossed numbers, and that's somewhat ironically a pre-tax transit benefit card, i.e. the least likely of any I own to ever be used in a carbon imprinter.
- vladvasiliu 2y ago
  In France, all my credit cards except the very last one have raised numbers. The last one with raised numbers was delivered to me in 2024. The one without came a few months later, from the same bank. It also has the number on the back, right next to the static CVC. I guess security is indeed their top priority. Anecdotally, all the credit cards I've had started to have the paint rub off the embossed number fairly quickly, rendering it very difficult to read. The other text on them didn't have this issue.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Most of my cards look like that these days. Arguably it's a wash for security: Yes, you can take a single photo of all the card details if the CVC is on the same side as the number and expiry, but on the other hand, there's nothing of value on the front now, which helps with people taking photos of their cards and posting them on social media. And I agree, the paint rubbing off is extremely annoying, and even worse when it's metallic paint, flakes of which have a habit of deeply embedding themselves in all kinds of leather and fabric materials. That, and the fact that you can't fit as many of them in a "card-only wallet", makes me not want to carry any of them anymore.
- TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
  Australia, info in profile

lxgr 2y ago

Because credit card fraud has had a few decades to evolve too, and is now orders of magnitudes more easy to coordinate. If word gets out that a given store has no online processing and is accepting carbon slips again, you can bet that quite a few people with stashes of stolen/closed credit cards will show up and start buying the most expensive items in the store. The modern equivalent would be offline chip processing. That is actually capable of at least ensuring that a given card is not heavily overdrawn or outright forged. Still, even that is unfortunately being scaled back significantly, given that "everything is always online anyway, so why do we need it?"