[kirillseva]

because legacy tech wants to be amortised over long time periods. If you start implementing things later you can pick the best tech. US banking was among the first to become digital and thus still has to maintain technical choices of the past

[tankenmate]

The UK were the first in the world to have ATMs, so there is plenty of ageing infrastructure in the UK. But the banks were forced (partly by the EU and partly by fraud) to move to chip and pin and they did relatively quickly.

[arghwhat]

The resistance to change can be explained much simpler:

It benefits only consumers, while costing the banks and payment providers. It's the same excuses for still having critical banking infrastructure written in COBOL.

[lucozade]

> It benefits only consumers, while costing the banks and payment providers

Hogwash. Yes I know all bankers live in extinct volcanoes but one thing they know a lot about is money. It is ridiculously expensive to support the US's conservatism when it comes to finance. The lack of chip and pin pales into insignificance compared to their addiction to paper checks, for example.

It would be completely in the banks' interests if everyone moved to internet banking, NFC cards etc because the running costs and fraud costs are vastly less. The problem is all those pesky, inertia-laden customers.

[arghwhat]

> The lack of chip and pin pales into insignificance compared to their addiction to paper checks, for example.

Paper checks are indeed a silly cost, but NFC provides banks no gain over chip. Chip provides gain over magnet stripe by basically rendering skimmers ineffective, but only basically in that credit card fraud is still a big business. Instead of skimmers, you use trojans or data leaks. Physical credit cards also sell very cheap on the black market.

In other words, NFC benefits only consumers, not banks. Chip benefits banks a little bit.

> if everyone moved to internet banking, NFC cards etc

Those are very different things. Internet banking benefits banks directly because they can shut down local branches and screw over customers (which they do here—I have to drive to a different city to insert cash, and can only do so within very limited hours).

NFC has no benefit to them (and might slightly increase fraud that the bank will have to cover by allowing ~$40 withdrawals made wirelessly from quite a far distance). Chip presents a pretty tiny benefit to them.

And most certainly, if you have a customer that already use a magnet stripe credit card, giving them an NFC card will result in instant adoption of the feature. We had some statistics when the feature rolled out—it was adopted by everyone with a supported card on the spot. It's much different when you're trying to change a check user to be a credit card user, but that might be more of an issue with the consumer experience with the bank—credit and debit cards over there sound so cumbersome compared to our system where the bank issues both credit and debit cards tied to your account. We don't have the "benefit" card mess.

It's a bit too easy to blame user inertia.

[skeletal88]

The benefit of NFC for banks would be an image and PR boost, the bank could say that they are the hip and trendy bank, come to us. Then other banks would have to follow eventually.

Why else would banks in europe adopt NFC or contactless payments?

[arghwhat]

I am only speaking for a single EU country here. In DK, features such as NFC are released for all banks simultaneously (that is, fully implemented and functioning) through the national payment provider, who is also the issuer for our national credit card type (which is a dual-type card by also being a VISA for international use, and is tied directly to a bank account). I don't think they have a choice, and they certainly gain no PR or image from it.

Now, the national payment provider (a private company) does it because they earn money on terminals, and want to fight to stay relevant in a world of emerging mobile payment solutions such as MobilePay (a Danish mobile payment solution of which over half the population are users).

The only exception to this rule appears to be Apple Pay, which is implemented by some individual banks. I am not sure if this is due to platform differences, or whether it is just the national payment provider fighting back. I'd suspect the latter, as Apply Pay just see our dual-type credit cards as VISA, sending them transaction fees that the national payment provider lose out on.

Other than that, banks here are only differentiated based on their financial solutions, and maybe in some rare cases by their mobile/internet banking solution (all have feature complete variants, but some are nicer than others).

[jandrese]

Seems like NFC benefits banks just as much as chips then. That's not nothing.

[arghwhat]

Yes, chip provides an almost negligible benefit over magnet stripe, and for the bank, NFC provides the exact same benefits as chip.

My point was that NFC provides no benefit over chip.

[kpil]

They can offer a more convenient payment method.

Apple pay and Samsung pay have contact free payments, and it's also more secure than signatures.

But as new payment infrastructure is expensive they will just move if they have to. Perhaps too slow, as their competitor are gnawing at their profit margins.

[walshemj]

Also due to some ODD ideas about banks by some of the founders you have not got the nationwide consolidation you did in the EU - the federal nature and relatively weak central government doesn't help either.

With a small number of banks and a stronger central government which can exert pressure you can see why the UK and EU are ahead.