Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by marshray 5461 days ago
Is that the reason? The chip on the card is positioned so that readers can be designed to only need the card inserted about halfway.

I think it has more to do with giving the machine the ability to not give the card back. :-)
1 comments
sid0 5461 days ago
What possible use case exists for that ability? The card's generally blocked after a set number of incorrect attempts anyway, so it's not as if it could be used anywhere else.

ATMs that keep your card for the duration of the transaction only serve to decrease trust in the mechanism.

link
marshray 5460 days ago
The card's generally blocked after a set number of incorrect attempts anyway, so it's not as if it could be used anywhere else.

Remember, credit cards originated before there was universal ubiquitous connectivity. It's still no guarantee (think of a small merchant at some outdoor festival). EMV (Chip and PIN) cards have an offline mode which an bad guy can use. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mkb23/interceptor/

ATMs that keep your card for the duration of the transaction only serve to decrease trust in the mechanism.

In the past, there were modes that allowed you to overdraw your account with an ATM. I imagine this was done in consideration for unreliable communications links or banks that needed downtime in their account balances for batch transaction processing.

"Trust" is a deep and strange concept, but at the end of the day US ATM cards are only a mag stripe and a 4-digit PIN. We'd best not expect too much from them. :-)

link