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by k-mcgrady 3630 days ago
Good points but that's not really a problem with the chip and pin tech. The parents comments sounded like he had a specific issue with that. Regarding speed I'm not too familiar with magnetic strip cards but don't you have to sign the receipt? If so that seems like it would take as long as entering a PIN. Also, do magnetic strips support contactless payments? The chip and PIN cards in the UK do which makes payments almost instant (up to £30).
2 comments
snuxoll 3630 days ago
We didn't do Chip+PIN in the US, we did Chip+Sign for everything but debit cards (which still use signatures in most cases as a lot of stores don't have support for the US Common Debit AID, yet). No, virtually nobody supports contactless on cards themselves, if you want that you're stuck with Apple Pay / Android Pay / Microsoft Wallet and having to use your phone or watch.

Our EMV rollout in the US was awful, the software running on card terminals is abysmally slow to authenticate transactions (taking upwards of 15 seconds in some cases), while traditional magnetic strips took maybe 2 or 3 to authorize. This is fixable, and multiple vendors in the chain have been providing fixes that drop the authentication+authorization time back down to the 3 second window, but it's going to take a while for it to get rolled out now that it's almost a full year after the big switch.

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k-mcgrady 3630 days ago
That sounds pretty terrible. In terms to auth speed we get that occasionally in very small stores (newsagents) but when you have to type in your PIN most stores handle it all in a few seconds now. The 15 second auth time was common here until about 5 years ago. In the last year I've also seen massive improvements, largely due to stores upgrading terminals to support contactless payments which I use almost everywhere now. I regularly leave home without my wallet as I can be quite certain I'll be able to use Apple Pay via the contactless terminal.
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ars 3624 days ago
With a magnetic strip you swipe and put it in your pocket. You can even do that while the cashier is scanning your items - meaning it doesn't cost you any time at all.

With chip you have to put it in the machine and leave it there until the transaction is finished, including signing. Only then can you take it out, exactly at the moment when you should be grabbing your bags.

It's much slower.

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