[melling]

The long slow road to contactless payments. Almost 2 decades along in the technology adoption curve.

I was ready for this in 2005.

https://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/debt-manage...

If course as the article points out, it wasn’t even new technology back then:

“ Not Exactly New Tech Mobile introduced the Speedpass in 1997. Speedpass is a small device on a keychain (called a fob) that users wave in front of the Speedpass logo on gas pumps. The cost of the gas is automatically deducted from the user's Speedpass account”

[baxtr]

I worked in the mobile industry back in 2010s. Every carrier had big shiny projects called "mobile payments" going on. They were exploring, together with banking partners how they could revolutionize contactless payments.

A key factor why all these project failed wasn't the technology. As you rightly point out, the technology was already available back then. It was mainly the vast differences in business models in the two industries: telcos and banking. The telcos were spoiled back then and expected any service to deliver a margin of at least 30%. Banks operated on a very different operating margin for the transactions. They never got that reconciled.

I remember back when Apple introduced Apple Pay many people were stunned by how little they charged. But in the end, that was their key insight to make this work. Quite impressive from a company with very high margins on their core products.

[bduerst]

Honestly, I think it was Apple refusing to fully support NFC until 2016 that prevented the market from jumping on contactless payments, at least in the US. They were holding something like a third of the market back from doing it which really made selling adoption to merchants difficult.

[pdpi]

Contactless bank cards were widespread in the UK before Apple or Google had their own payment systems. I think the "real story", as it were, is that the banking industry held contactless payments way more than Apple ever did.

[bobberkarl]

This is not true!

Sorry for the passion but i was involved in the mobile payment scene at the time. It was not the banks halting the development of mobile payment. It was: 1- Apple 2- MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) 3- Samsung

Apple closed off the iphone NFC api which dried up VC funding in the mobile payment scene. This is one of the reason we have QR Codes everywhere today, and not NFC tags.

To securely process mobile payment, you needed to have a secure enclave (SE) on the phone which would keep encryption keys safely. At the time, the MNOs wanted that secure enclave to be the SIM card, so they could control that space. Google retaliated by cutting some circuitry between the SIM Card and the phone: the SWI lines. Banks were charging north of a million $ to embed applications in the SIM Cards, and were charging you the same for any update. Apple at the time started charging 4 million $ as a deposit to acquire a special nfc permission (walmart and starbucks had one) to emulate a credit card.

Samsung was the worst. They were already embedding a Secure element in their phones without giving access to it. They started 2 or 3 years ago giving access to 3rd partys.

[bduerst]

>Apple closed off the iphone NFC api which dried up VC funding in the mobile payment scene. This is one of the reason we have QR Codes everywhere today, and not NFC tags.

Yep, this was my experience as well, working in the NFC space at the time. Apple also basically forced the whole IoT space to start focusing on QR codes instead of NFC tags, because they were lagging technologically with the iPhone.

[Flimm]

You're replying to someone talking about contactless card payments, and you're talking about mobile payments. They are not the same thing.

[bobberkarl]

Contactless card payments and mobile payments are the same under the hood. It's just ISO 14443 at the end of the day. Mobile payments are just Host-Card Emulation (HCE).

Some links: - https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/... - https://xamoom.com/new-nfc-capabilities-for-all-iphones/

[bduerst]

GP originally replied to my comment about contactless payments, not cards. In the US their adoption was synonymous.

[bduerst]

Right, and with the advent of NFC in phones, US consumers didn't need the banks' permission to pay contactlessly. Despite this, contactless payment adoption was still slow in the U.S. even though most phones had NFC, it wasn't critical mass until Apple finally decided to support NFC technology.

[closeparen]

You do actually need the bank's permission to enroll a card for Apple/Android Pay, it is a feature they have to support.

[bduerst]

It is today with different added features, but back in the 2010s you didn't need your bank to support it. You could do it with your VISA/Mastercard/AMEX credit or debit card.

[Jcowell]

I would argue it was a myriad of factors. Here in NY the adoption of OMNY and the pandemic contributed far more than Apple rolling out Tap to pay. The biggest issue being merchants lacking having the motivation to move away from outdated readers.

[kevin_thibedeau]

There was an attempt to deploy contactless cards in the US in the mid 00's. I used mine once at a grocery store. Merchants rarely supported them so banks stopped issuing them.

[rattlesnakedave]

This is correct. The other comment that I can't reply to is incorrect. Banks not supporting apple pay were a significant holdup to NFC payments in the US.

[baxtr]

Apple never played a significant role in any project since their install base was just too small.

Apple is a company with a clear focus. They didn’t even support MMS in the first iPhone. Rightly so.

[HWR_14]

Given transaction volumes, I imagine Apple will make more money from Apple Pay than the App Store soon, even with an order of magnitude smaller rake.

[profmonocle]

Something I was thinking about the other day is how some modern credit cards technically have four different ways to pay. Swiping pressure-sensitive paper over the raised numbers (the original method) is still possible, though I haven't seen a merchant actually do this since maybe the mid-2000's. Then you have magstripe, chip, and RFID all in the same card.

Pretty impressive backwards compatibility, although I think the original copy-to-paper mechanism is finally being phased out, since some new credit cards no longer have raised digits. (My new Visa from Chase has the digits on the back, and they're only slightly embossed and not in the same place. Probably wouldn't work with the old swipers.)

I wonder how long until magstripe is phased out?

[munk-a]

> Swiping pressure-sensitive paper over the raised numbers (the original method) is still possible

I've seen this still happen occasionally in taxis - or rather I saw it happen within the past decade. When I last lived in the states I'd bump into it especially with rural taxis - I assume it's dying quickly though because it's incredibly inconvenient when compared to paying via an app or tapping.

The lack of raised digits is actually a serious issue for legibility, I've had the digits fully rub off on some flat-printed cards - this may have been a low quality printing issue but either way I wouldn't applaud it being adopted since the raised numbers make it easier to read by eye.

[moron4hire]

I've had a lot of taxi drivers tell me they couldn't take credit cards at all. That is, until I tell them "I have no other way to pay, so I guess... later dude". Suddenly it's, "oh, oh, oh, the card reader is working again, look at that!"

[munk-a]

Whenever I get into an airport taxi I always mention "Oh you take credit card right?" due to the queue system at airports they either reply yes and, if they actually don't, I get out guilt free at the other end - or they reply no and I move to the next taxi down the line. A significant number of airport taxis do shady stuff to try and extract extra or under the table payment.

(Edit, just to clarify - I get out of the Taxi on the other end guilt free because the driver lied to me about payment options. I don't like skipping out on service payments - I think people should be paid fairly for the work they're doing (even if I could get away with not paying)... but if you're lying to me you're doing me a disservice)

[profmonocle]

This reminds of of when I was in Oslo back in 2014. We ordered food at a small restaurant after confirming they accepted credit cards. When it came time to pay, the woman behind the counter refused to scan our credit cards because they had no chips. (It would have worked, every other card terminal we'd used in the country still supported magstripe, and I saw that her machine had a scanner. She didn't say the reader was broken or anything, just refused to try.)

We didn't have cash, so we just left. The woman was furious. We hadn't received our food yet, but it was already being cooked. She screamed at us to go to an ATM a few blocks away, get cash, and come back. We just found another restaurant. If the card hadn't worked I would've felt bad and probably done that, but she wouldn't even try it. Don't advertise that you take credit cards and get mad when customers try to use them.

[lmm]

> It would have worked, every other card terminal we'd used in the country still supported magstripe, and I saw that her machine had a scanner. She didn't say the reader was broken or anything, just refused to try.

Just because the terminal has a magstripe reader on doesn't mean her merchant account provider accepts it. Plenty don't, or some transfer the liability to the store in that case.

> If the card hadn't worked I would've felt bad and probably done that, but she wouldn't even try it. Don't advertise that you take credit cards and get mad when customers try to use them.

In 2014 a card that doesn't have a chip might as well be broken. I don't think you can put this one on her.

[jjav]

> In 2014 a card that doesn't have a chip might as well be broken.

2014. I don't remember with 100% confidence, but I'm pretty sure none of my (many) credit cards had a chip back in 2014.

Stores here didn't even start installing chip reader card stations until ~2018 or so.

[profmonocle]

> In 2014 a card that doesn't have a chip might as well be broken.

Chips were basically non-existent on US cards in 2014.

[CamperBob2]

And people wonder why Uber killed the whole taxi industry overnight.

[munk-a]

Well, in all fairness, Uber mostly killed the whole taxi industry by being really really illegal and not following any of the rules - including those meant for regulatory capture and those for safety. About 3000 women are sexually assaulted by Uber drivers every year - I'm not saying that doesn't happen with taxis too, just be careful about painting a too-rosy picture.

[girvo]

No one painted a too-rosy picture. They just pointed out that Uber killed Taxis because Taxis ran on horrible service plus a government mandated monopoly. Take away the latter like Uber did, and there’s no need to put up with the former.

[profmonocle]

I'm not sure how it was in the early days of Uber, but these days Uber does background checks on drivers, and IIRC they have for quite some time. Is there really any reason to believe that cab companies would do a better job of weeding out horrible people than Uber? I can't imagine they do much more than a background check.

[signatoremo]

Taxi in a lot of places, and I’ve been to many countries, don’t follow the rules either. Turn off meter, take long route, all the shady stuff, pretend to not understand foreigners

[dzhiurgis]

I've filled up gas once for the driver in Malaysia.

[scrollaway]

Cards are slowly moving towards not having printed numbers at all, and having the numbers only available via the issuer's app or website. This allows for rotating numbers.

[munk-a]

Rotating numbers are still extremely viable with fixed card numbers - it's possible to issue a set of semi-permenant printed numbers and also offer a tool that can issue additional digits for untrustworthy retailers or strange one-off payments. The removal of digits from the card itself is a cost being levied on the customer and it provides no real benefit.

[scrollaway]

Removal of digits reduces reissuances which are annoying for both issuer and customer.

[thasaleni]

Cards are moving towards no card at all i.e. virtual cards. USA is very slow in adopting new payment technology compared to the rest of the world. I live in South Africa and tap to pay is so much of a thing that you do not have to worry if you leave your card at home as you can tap at like 80% of the merchants, and if you can't they will have a fall back like QR code etc, NFC enabled cards have been around for years and all the merchants are really quick in adopting them.

[vxNsr]

Care to share some examples? I’ve never seen this in the US

[tialaramex]

In the UK my current debit card for my good bank is a flat black rectangle with the Mastercard Logo (overlapping circles) the name of the bank, the chip connector, and an arrow (for those with reasonable vision to determine correct orientation if they've never seen a chip before). From a Tactile point of view it has an indentation (orientation again) and a single Braille-like bump signifying "This is your debit card" (other cards may have more bumps).

On the back though it has a lot of details about the account, who I am, validity and so on, so all the same data is on the card, just not on the front and not embossed.

Current era bank cards aren't bright enough to change their numbers though, many of them are scarcely "smarter" than they were when they were completely passive, just barely enough going on to make it trickier to counterfeit them, not really any attempt to actually make that truly impossible for the majority of banks and customers. From the bank's point of view if they spend $5 per card to avoid $3 per card of fraud, they wasted $2 per card, and if half that fraud lands on the customer (because Mrs Smith didn't notice or the bank successfully prevented her claiming her money back and blamed her for the loss instead) they wasted $3.50.

[nsp]

Apple card is the only one I'm aware of

[gleenn]

The Apple credit card only shows the number if you reveal it in Apple Wallet app. Their card, technically run by Goldman Sachs, is all white with no numbers. Not sire how to verify but I've heard if you use it with Apple Pay I think it doesn't use that number, but a rotating one.

[pwinnski]

It can use a rotating number, I think, but when I tap my watch, any receipt with shows me the last four digits still shows me the same last four digits. Apple rotates the CVV, but not the card number so much.

[mastazi]

In Italy, debit cards have numbers that are not embossed (however they are slightly "engraved" i.e. the number forms a slight depression on the card - basically the opposite of embossing). IIRC I've seen the same in other EU countries. I now live in Australia and in my experience, here all cards are embossed, no matter if they are credit or debit cards.

[softveda]

Most new cards that I have seen in Australia doesn't have embossing, they have flat surface. The number is simply printed on the back. Many banks allow you to lock the card using the App as well.

[pwinnski]

In the US, I have multiple Chase credit cards with no raised numbers. The number is printed in flat ink on the back of the card.

The Apple card doesn't display the number anywhere on the card at all.

[Reason077]

> "I wouldn't applaud it being adopted since the raised numbers make it easier to read by eye."

I disagree with this. The new-style card numbers are printed in a much more legible typeface, with more contrast than the old raised numbers. Much easier to read IMO, although the blind may disagree! I've had no issues with the ink wearing off on any of my cards.

[rustyminnow]

I had my card taken that way five-ish years ago. It was on a ferry where presumably there wasn't enough service to use a digital reader. Or maybe the system was just down. I never knew that was an option until then!

[profmonocle]

I was on a train a few years back and the snack cart had to go cash-only when we were in cellular dead zones. I guess it depends on the operator's risk tolerance - you can't tell if a card is declined until the customer is long gone, but if the dead zones are big enough you'll get fewer sales because so many people don't carry cash anymore.

[tialaramex]

One of the hotels I used to stay at did this too, they had a modern card terminal when you checked out, but they took impressions of cards during check-in. It doesn't really do much of anything in the modern era, but you felt like it was doing something and that's enough. Card payments have two separate uncorrelated steps. Authorisation and Settlement.

In the Authorisation step, the merchant on behalf of the network can decide whether you, the supposed card holder, are authorised to make this payment. For example if you have Chip-and-PIN this is the step where a PIN failure means they won't give you the bottle of whiskey you just pointed at through the glass.

To be effective Authorisation must happen up front. With Chip cards, (and also contactless payment) this can happen even offline, because the Chip can carry policy decisions like "Offline payment of up to $10 each time, $100 total before I talk to the network is OK, after that No more until I see a network" inside it.

Impression machines were the very most rudimentary type of "Authorisation", the impression recorded is some evidence they actually saw your card. Or a card embossed with the same numbers, at some point. Modern networks don't want the useless paper trail which results, but some impression machines are still out there and hey, it felt like a "real" card payment. The fact they're essentially useless doesn't matter because...

The Settlement step is separate, and often happens hours, or even days later. In this step the Merchant says, hey Payment Network, I'm Some Big Merchant and I want $123 from your customer #9876.

You might think, aha, and now they provide details from that authorisation right? Right? Nope. It's totally unauthenticated, subject to all manner of glitches and mistakes, and it is based entirely on trust. The big merchants are rich, so, if they sometimes lie and steal that's OK. Whereas if you, Mr Wage Earner, don't pay for that can of Pepsi, you're a criminal and you're going to jail.

If some merchant in say, Spain decides you just spend €546 on a TV with your card, even though you've never visited Europe, that just works. Left to itself, €546 plus conversion costs goes on your card account. To reverse that you'd have to notice the €546 charge, call your bank and complain about this clearly fraudulent card transaction. They're not always going to magically detect it, they should have some anti-fraud pattern matching e.g. if that store suddenly claims everybody living in your town in Ohio bought a TV from them, that's suspicious, it probably doesn't go through, and hey if you never visited Europe maybe that's enough to block it, but not necessarily. The responsibility sadly always stays with you to report any bogus transactions that get through even though the Card Networks made barely any effort to prevent fraud. So, read your card statements.

[fhood]

Me neither, my first encounter with it was 3 or 4 years ago at a backpacking shelter in Iceland.

[toufka]

And the numbers themselves that can be entered manually.

5 payment modalities with a thin piece of plastic.

[Twisell]

And what really make this a 5th modality is the required CVV (card verification value) printed on the backside of the card.

[denimnerd42]

From what I know is CVV isn't required if the card is presented in person. The card processor will revoke your agreement if you verify the card is present and it's actually not however.

[jalk]

Which is why I have a habit of removing the cvv from the card(scratching the numbers off) and just remember those 3 digits like an extra pin. This practice is becoming obsolete with MFA solutions like 3Dsecure

[el-salvador]

I'm not sure if this is still the case. But some years ago when paying with a mag stripe card in two South American countries seemed to type the CVV code on the POS terminal. This was different from other countries where they type the last four digits of the card number.

[seanmcdirmid]

A lot of credit cards (Apple...) no longer have raised numbers, or a number on the front at all.

[bdamm]

Or even, in Apple's case, a consistent "card" attached number at all.

[mehrdada]

Is that right? My understanding is the physical AppleCard has a fixed number that is simply not printed and relies on rotating CVV via the standard chip reading like most standard chip cards. The device-based ApplePay can rotate its number but that too only rotates CVV by default.

[bdamm]

My point was only that the card-chip associated number, the ApplePay associated number, and the number the user hands out to web sites, are not correlated. The user could choose to change their CC number every day when they wake up if they want, and the physical card does not change in any way as a result. Nor does it need to, since you cannot use it outside of the card.

[jermaustin1]

Only one of my cards actually has raised numbers and its about to expire, so will probably get a completely flat one that replaces it as well. 2 of my cards are tap only, the mag stripe is gone - they are also store-specific cards, so that might have something to do with it.

Master card said they will start phasing out mag strip in 2024.

Soon enough tap/dip will be the only way.

[Pxtl]

Yeah, here in Canada the magstrip has all but gone the way of the dodo - it's chip-and-pin or tap everywhere here. IIRC vendors here stopped taking magstrips before the Americans even.

Cards still have magstrips on them but I can't remember the last time one got used. Maybe a gas station.

[josephg]

Same in Aus. I think banking innovation like this is way easier in smaller countries like australia because there’s way fewer banks. The USA has hundreds of banks - so getting them to all agree on a standard is near impossible. It’s no wonder America still uses ACH and cheques.

Australia has just 6 banks. And they have a history of collaborating on things like this - since a fluid economy raises all boats, and fraud hurts them all. All Australian cards and point of sale systems support chips and taps. And have for nearly a decade.

[vinay427]

There's a similar situation in Switzerland, where a handful of banks dominate the national market despite some smaller (cantonal) options that mostly have their own consortium anyway. The larger banks cooperated on creating a mobile payments platform known as TWINT [1], which allows for fast and free individual payments for splitting the cost of a meal, private sales, or even many in-store transactions. This allows them a competitive advantage over alternatives such as small Swiss banks or foreign banks that the many non-Swiss residents in Switzerland may otherwise continue using. These other options are relegated to IBAN transfers which are notably less convenient.

[1] https://www.twint.ch/en/

[Pxtl]

I think the problem is less the country size and more that the USA had a legislative structure that encouraged small, local banks until recently (1980 iirc) and so before then there was a Cambrian explosion of banks (pardon the pun). Now banks are gradually consolidating, but they have nothing close to the oligopoly that you see in countries without that sort of history.

[throwawayboise]

The big holdout in the USA was fuel pumps. For some reason they demanded and got all kinds of extra time to convert to chip cards instead of swipe.

[jjav]

> The big holdout in the USA was fuel pumps.

Was? Most of the ones I use are still magstripe-based ("remove your card quickly"). Only occasionally it says "leave card inserted" which is where (I assume) it's talking to the chip.

[jjav]

> Cards still have magstrips on them but I can't remember the last time one got used.

But the chips are relatively flaky and often don't work. At least here (California) after three failed chip communication attempts, the terminal allows a magstripe swipe instead as a backup. Happens quite often.

[hoten]

> Swiping pressure-sensitive paper over the raised numbers (the original method) is still possible

I actually had to do this in 2013! Working as a waiter at Chili's, whenever the power went out (happened once or twice the year I worked there) we'd dig out a quite heavy apparatus and make carbon copies of the credit cards. Every time I used it, my customers commented they'd never seen such a thing before (I suppose the clientele was either too young or had bad memories).

Earlier last year, I was at Shake Shack when their online payment system went down. They decided to just stop charging people (even if they had cash!) and gave out free meals. I much prefer that system.

[Reason077]

> "Swiping pressure-sensitive paper over the raised numbers (the original method) is still possible, though I haven't seen a merchant actually do this since maybe the mid-2000's."

I've noticed all the UK-issued cards I've received in the last year or two no longer have the raised numbers. Just the same details printed in ink on the card. Quite an improvement as the card details are easier to read now!

Still seem to have the traditional (but almost never used) magnetic stripe, however.

[labster]

The numbers are no longer raised on my US Amazon card, but due to gray-on-gray the numbers are much harder to read. Smaller numbers give more white space for a very clean design. So I get to see much better modern UX as I squint to read my card.

[profmonocle]

Not sure about Europe, but here in the US you can use the magstripe if your chip is broken. After three failed scans with the chip it lets you use the magstripe. I've always felt like it defeats the purpose - if the idea is that the chip is harder to clone, couldn't scammers just make fake cards with phony chips, and do that when they use it?

I'd say maybe it raises fraud alerts faster, but I had a friend who did this for every credit payment for like two months before she finally had them replace her broken card. (No idea why, since it was free.)

[Reason077]

> "Not sure about Europe, but here in the US you can use the magstripe if your chip is broken."

Yeah, this used to be the case (years ago) in the UK too. But now days, most card readers no longer have magstripe readers on them. The chip is the backup now in case contactless fails!

[dathinab]

> is still possible

Wait what?

I think in many parts of the world that isn't possible anymore for a long long time. Like all of EU.

[mercutio2]

Europe had dramatically more credit card fraud than the US, so Europe mandated EMV decades before the US.

It will be many years before US merchants truly phase out accepting magnetic strips.

[Tempest1981]

> original copy-to-paper mechanism

And when the pressure-stamp machine broke, the merchant would use a pen, and write the card number by hand. No problem.

[jalk]

Or just drag the length of the pen over the paper while card is underneath. Repeat a couple of times to get a good imprint while making sure to keep paper/card alignment

[el-salvador]

I've had this happen in 2018/2019 in a Central American country.

[jon-wood]

On at least one of my cards magstripe is officially considered a legacy feature, I have to explicitly request that it's enabled if I'm travelling to a place likely to make use of magstripe payments, and it will only remain enabled for one or two weeks.

[josephg]

I had no idea if the magnetic stripe on my (australian) credit card worked until a recent trip to the USA. I’ve had that card for years and I don’t think I’ve ever swiped it before. Australian POS terminals won’t let you use the magnetic strip on a card when chip & pin is available. Even inserting your card seems old fashioned now - PayPass (contactless payment) is by far the most common way to pay in australia.

Each year there seems to be fewer reasons to carry a wallet around. Cash? Killed by covid. Card? Apple Pay. Drivers licence? There’s an app for that. It won’t be long before wallets are entirely useless.

[HWR_14]

I'm far more likely to have my wallet on me than my phone. Credit cards have infinite battery life, 100% waterproofing, no real-time tracking/spying and low to no cost to lose. Cash trades out the low cost to lose for anonymity.

[kevin_thibedeau]

> no real-time tracking/spying

You'll want a Faraday cage for any contactless cards.

[HWR_14]

Yes. They sell wallets with Faraday cages. I have been so far able to push off contactless cards, so I just assumed that other people who care about avoiding realtime tracking also insist on chip only.

[msh]

I think you are in the minority here.

[munk-a]

Just don't assume that's to do you any favors - credit card fraud is 100% on them, the removal of features is to minimize fraud and if it's a feature you still occasionally need it's being done at your expense.

[blowski]

Sure it’s 100% on the credit card company, but it’s still very inconvenient for the cardholder.

[stephen_g]

The magnetic stripe is basically phased out in Australia. Sometimes readers let you swipe if the chip doesn’t read after the second try, but the terminals actually don’t let you swipe otherwise and tell you to insert the card if you try!

It’s been like this for several years now - and tap to pay has basically been the default (for purchases under $100) for even longer.

[anitil]

I think the limit has been raised now? I bought something for around $130 and tapped for it the other day

[78zeros]

It was raised to $200 when the pandemic went into full swing, for 3 months initially and was extended. Most recent thing I found about it is from Sept last year - https://www.auspaynet.com.au/resources/ContactlessLimits

[emteycz]

I had a merchant use the numbers on paper method in 2017.

[np-]

I rented a bicycle in Florida a few days ago where the merchant took an imprint of my card (yeah, in February 2022). I'm not even sure how that can possibly be cheaper than one of those Square devices at this point.

[queuebert]

Of all of these, which is the most secure?

[samstave]

I wonder how many trillions of credit cards have become microplastics in our oceans over the many decades...

[profmonocle]

It's probably trivial to other sources of plastic pollution. Most people get what, maybe one new credit card and one new debit card every 4-5 years? By volume it's nothing compared to the average person's consumption of single-use plastics like packaging, etc.

[jacquesm]

EU has contactless paying for a while now, but it uses a chip embedded in the bank card.

[throwaway894345]

I studied abroad in France in 2012--at this time, all European card readers had been chip-based for quite a while and my US credit card didn't have one. I couldn't figure out how to use them and many store clerks had no idea what to do with my magnetic-strip credit card.

I went to England in 2019, at which point cards in the US had been updated to use magnetic stripes, and everyone was using tap-to-pay. It turns out my credit card had tap-to-pay support as well but it wasn't widely used in the US (or at least in my sphere). Now it finally seems common-enough here.

I'm planning another trip to Europe in the next year... Really eager to see what payments look like nowadays.

[Medowar]

..just dont go to Germany. We are not very advanced in that regard.

Of course huge amounts of stores offer contactless paying, but generally Cash is still dominant around here. Change is slow, and currently, Cash is still king, especially with small or street merchants.

[BiteCode_dev]

Since I'm dreading the coming of a cashless society, I'm really rooting for the German to push back against it as long as they can so that I can keep using notes and coins in euros.

[dash2]

I always found that so weird! The Exportweltmeister, producing some of the most advanced equipment... and in many places you can't pay with a card at all. Why do you think it is?

[dathinab]

Machinery needs to be lubricated to run well.

For many small businesses non-tax registered money is the lub which makes them run well.

Jokes aside the price of getting a card terminal where for many businesses completely unattractive for a long time and often still are if put in context to the number of people which will use it.

I know one local takeaway which stopped accepting card payment after their terminal broke recently, as it wasn't worth it to buy a new one. Instead they now allow sending money by PayPal, but non-advertised and mainly for a single specific big recurring customer and sometimes if someone doesn't has cash with them.

[yccs27]

We Germans seem to love our cold hard cash, so the incentive to get a card reader is lower. There are even automatic coin counting machines in some self-checkout desks...

[TillE]

To clarify, you can rely on nearly any supermarket or drug store to accept credit cards / contactless these days. Daily shopping is no problem.

Smaller stores or restaurants, forget it. Bring cash.

[cyxxon]

It has gotten much better in the pandemic. I pay at the bakery etc with cards. Not sure when I last paid enything with cash. Only caveat is that "cards" not always means Visa/MC/AmEx, but can mean Girocard only. If that is the case (and I'd just ask) then you as a non German will have to pay cash.

[jacquesm]

In restaurants it just so happens that not all of the people are on the books and neither is all of the income.

[ksec]

That is a feature, not a bug.

[jurmous]

We in The Netherlands are one of the most cashless societies in Europe. We mostly pay with our mobiles or contactless with banking cards. We even are "going Dutch" sharing our bills with what we call a Tikkie: One person pays the bill and then we send over instant messaging our payment request for money which can be payed directly with one click and authentication in banking app.

One thing that is annoying for foreigners with credit cards is that they are barely accepted here. We work mostly with Maestro and almost all Dutch e-commerce sites work with Ideal which directly link to the banking apps of the local banks.

My wallet does not contain any cash anymore and just an ID and OV card.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dutch-payment-landscape-one-m...

[larkost]

For Americans visiting the Netherlands one word of caution: many of the pay terminals (especially the parking ones) do not seem to like U.S. cards, and even some the vendors from Europe. When we were on vacation there a few years ago it was a roulette game to figure out if parking meters would take my card or that of my father in law (from Hungary).

The problem is that they have a local exchange there, and do not have cross agreements with all of the payment vendors (not at the Visa level, but bellow that). It was annoying, and caused us a lot of hassle. I am not sure how we could have avoided it.

[jurmous]

Most shops in the Netherlands work with maestro of mastercard and vpay of Visa. It is directly linked to our bank credit and has low transaction fees. Maestro and vpay is accepted all over the world. We work directly with IBAN numbers and not with credit card types like mostly in the world.

Normal Mastercard/visa credit don’t work here since shops have to pay way higher transaction fees while almost nobody uses them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maestro_(debit_card) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_PayPlease

It will be phased out though in 2023 to Mastercard debit and visa debit so likely in the future Netherlands payment system will be more aligned with what other countries use.

[jacquesm]

> It will be phased out though in 2023 to Mastercard debit and visa debit

That sounds like an absolutely terrible idea. Why would we give these two rotten-to-the-core companies such power over our payment systems?

[munk-a]

For Canadians - they've got no issue with almost all of our cards. It's just the American ones that run into issues, so your chip & pin and tap features will work splendidly abroad.

[samstave]

Now you know why so many dutch ride bikes!

:-)

[hk__2]

Can’t speak for other countries, but in France and Northern Italy this is the same: contactless cards everywhere. I live in France and --I have to check my banking app to check this because I don’t remember-- the last time I went to a cash machine was almost one year ago.

[mrep]

I'm in the US and the only time I can remember going to an ATM in the past 5 years is because farmers markets sometimes give you discounts > credit card rewards for cash and weed shops cannot use banks so you have to pay cash.

[dzhiurgis]

IMO farmers markets would disappear if they stopped using cash. It's basically synonym for tax avoidance sprinkled with some fraudulent claims how your honey cures everything.

[theshrike79]

Ditto for Finland. Contactless cards or mobile phone payments work everywhere.

I haven't touched cash ever since covid hit, and very rarely before it.

[SSLy]

Same for Poland, and what I've heard, Sweden.

[pelorat]

Hopefully we can get rid of our OV cards soon. Annoys me a lot that I have to take it out of my wallet every time.

[rozenmd]

I've lived in France since September, and I think I've used cash... once? You can live entirely off using your phone/credit card to pay these days (if you don't frequent "cash-only" shops).

[eldaisfish]

worth mentioning that this seems a problem limited to the US. Even in Canada, the smallest of towns will have contactless payment. Many Canadians don't really use cash because interac/credit cards have all supported tap to pay for over a decade now.

[throwaway894345]

To be clear, the US has contactless payments all over and probably has had them since ~2015, it just took some time for people to "discover" them.

[seanmcdirmid]

A lot of POS's support contactless payments, but they were kind of flaky for the first two years, and...oddly slow.

Fred Meyers here in WA still doesn't support contactless payments (QFC, owned by the same company, does, however), annoying since I still have to shop there often.

[throwaway894345]

> A lot of POS's support contactless payments, but they were kind of flaky for the first two years

Yeah, that was my experience as well.

> Fred Meyers here in WA still doesn't support contactless payments (QFC, owned by the same company, does, however), annoying since I still have to shop there often.

I've largely had good experiences all over the midwest, but there are a few Stripe card readers that advertise "contactless" but don't actually work (probably misconfigured?). I've been traveling around AZ recently, and I've found a few POS terminals that don't support contactless at all, strangely. But overall they seem pretty widely available.

[techsupporter]

> Fred Meyers here in WA still doesn't support contactless payments (QFC, owned by the same company, does, however)

Some Freddy's do, at least intermittently. A few weeks ago, the one in Lake City had it enabled on their pads at the self checkout and I successfully used tap. But when I went back a week after that, tap was turned back off.

Kroger uses their smaller brands as testbeds for stuff and since QFC is somewhere in the bottom five for size-of-Kroger-operated-brands, I guess it makes sense.

[adventured]

People will still be talking about how the US doesn't have contactless payments another five years from now. It's an inexpensive way to feel good.

[cromka]

> People will still be talking about how the US doesn't have contactless payments another five years from now. It's an inexpensive way to feel good.

From my personal experience, there were roughly about 80% of shops in NYC, up until the beginning of pandemic, that did not accept contactless or where it did not work. One particular supermarket next door had the proper POS for 3 years and it still wouldn't work even this May when I left.

The restaurants were even worse.

[brimble]

I've only just gotten used to the slide-it-in-the-slot kind. Whatever that's called. The thing that's replacing the magnetic stripes, more or less.

I always forget about contactless. I think all my cards can do it? Not knowing for sure is why I never try, and just stick the card in the slot, which always works.

I think I've paid with my phone one time ever. For some reason I can't bring myself to trust it to work 100% of the time so I can leave my cards at home, at which point I may as well just use a card since I have 'em anyway. I guess I could start carrying phone + cash as a backup and skip the cards, but that's even less convenient. I do activate the payment screen (iPhone) all the time by accident, though I couldn't tell you how.

(I'm not even that old...)

[throwaway894345]

> I've only just gotten used to the slide-it-in-the-slot kind.

I always called this "chip". My UK friends called it "chip-and-pin" in 2012. But yeah, no idea what the technical or widely-accepted colloquial terms are.

> Not knowing for sure is why I never try, and just stick the card in the slot

Yeah, for some reason the UX for contactless is terrible. Sometimes something will show four evenly-spaced green lights (and sometimes they're blue--in any case, why does that mean "contactless"?) but often those lights don't appear until you attempt a tap-to-pay and then they might be delayed by several seconds. And even then, occasionally the hardware malfunctions and can't actually handle tap-to-pay. These hardware failures seemed to be way more common in the early days, but now almost everything does support tap-to-pay--you just often can't tell until you try which is just the dumbest thing ever.

> I think I've paid with my phone one time ever. For some reason I can't bring myself to trust it to work 100% of the time so I can leave my cards at home

I definitely do it as a last resort, but I've done it a few times (e.g., if I forget my wallet). Mostly on iOS I'm often trying to pay quickly and I try to activate the contactless payment but I'll end up turning my phone off or I'll try to bring up my card before my phone is close enough. The uncertainty always makes me feel way more anxious than it should and it's just less stress to use a card (cards also don't run out of batteries).

[outworlder]

You should see the 'contactless' symbol (looks like a sideways wifi logo) if your card supports it.

I generally pay with the apple watch if the store supports it (most seem to, nowadays). It is more convenient than reaching for the wallet since the thing is in my wrist anyway.

[eldaisfish]

my point is that contactless and chip-cards have been around for so long outside the US that magnetic stripes are the oddity. Even the smallest of places with electronic payments will support either chip cards or contactless tap or often both. Near the US border in Canada, many shops have machines that read magnetic stripes. These machines cater almost exclusively to American travellers.

[ska]

And yet, I've had contactless rejected (even, we want a signature) as recently as 2018, at least. In major metro in California - let alone gas-station-in-rural-Georgia type places.

The tech was mostly there a while ago, but hardly universally supported. This is one tech area where the US has definitely been notably behind the curve.

[bayindirh]

In Turkey you can move around almost cashless now. Taxis started to accept cards in droves due to the pandemic and some municipalities are integrating VISA/Master infra to the mass transport, so you can just travel with your card.

Besides that, literally everywhere allows contactless payments. Even Visa/Master is changing their card designs to move vital information to the back of the card to prevent information theft via hidden cameras or a very keen eye.

[throwaway894345]

Same in the US. I virtually never use cash. The only real problem I run into is the occasional "open bar"--drinks are free but there's still an etiquette that you should leave a tip which generally means cash.

[cromka]

> drinks are free but there's still an etiquette that you should leave a tip which generally means cash.

In my experience on such rare few occasions I was able to tip with Venmo.

[throwaway894345]

Is there a "tip with venmo" poster displayed or do you have to ask the bartender their venmo account name? I've never seen this before, but agreed that it's rare.

[emteycz]

The EU terminals have support for tips separated from the primary amount.

[throwaway894345]

If I understand you correctly, we have those here in the States as well, but the problem is you're not using your CC in the first place (in the "open bar" scenario) so you never actually use the terminals.

[can16358p]

If only our banks also supported Apple Pay...

[batuhanicoz]

That's probably a BDDK (regulatory body for banks) issue.

Good thing is you can actually use Apple Pay, I use my Watch to pay for stuff all the time.

You have to have a foreign bank account that supports it, I use Wise since it allows Turkish customers.

[can16358p]

Any issues about taxing etc if I get directly paid to Wise? I'd love to be able to use Apple Pay in Turkey.

[user_7832]

Can't speak for other countries, but at least here in the Netherlands, chip based cards are still the main type of card, though most of these cards support contactless payment as well. Almost all PoSes also support Apple/Google pay too which is actually pretty convenient. However, I think many (supermarket) PoSes also support magnetic - they appear to have 2 card slots on them.

[throwaway473825]

Can't speak for the Netherlands, but contactless payments seem to dominate in many European countries: https://www.nets.eu/Media-and-press/news/Pages/The-DACH-regi...

[tuyiown]

For france: contactless on phone should be ok with widely used card providers (VISA)

Beware, since covid, use of cash has dramatically fallen, last month a restaurant struggled to give me 2€ change, they didn't have 2€ in cash ! Paying in cash with the right amount should never be a problem though.

[jacquesm]

That may have been a signal that you should tip more.

[sbcd]

France is not America, thank you very much. I have never seen people leave tips here.

[Kognito]

Haven’t used cash since the pandemic started in the UK. Covid encouraged even market traders and street food vendors to move to contactless payments - which were just about the final holdouts.

[dzhiurgis]

NZ'er here - haven't used cash for years, except when you sell something online or buy drugs.

Spend is kinda hilarious - in supermarket checkout "can I pay $150 in cash and remaining using card?" just so you don't have to deal with coins.

[fennecfoxy]

Also a kiwi (although living in UK) I've used contactless since it was first available in NZ (ages ago) but when I returned late 2019 I found that contactless was no longer accepted at certain places, like liquor stores. Too many munters nicking cards to buy booze with I guess.

I can't wait to live in a 100% cashless society but I do think that the process should be refined (especially for phone payments).

Atm I tap and often have no idea if I'm really paying exactly what I should be. Credit card/debit numbers should only ever be temporary and for a given amount to a given merchant (like how my bank requires generating an OTP when adding a new payee). Confirmation that we are paying x merchant £y is definitely required.

Current system is really weak in that if someone has my credit/debit number they can arbitrarily charge me, in the UK if someone has my sort code + bank they can use that at a business to create a debit request and I get arbitrarily charged.

[rodgerd]

Same, but it's largely been that way since the early 90s.

It's weird getting pitches from US FinTechs that are solving problems that literally only exist because of how painfully backward that US financial infrastructure is.

[newroman]

I tend to not carry a card anymore, just my phone (Romania). I don't remember the last time I went to a shop that didn't accept card. Everyone who accepts cards accepts contactless.

[nly]

The reverse problem is also true. As a Brit traveling in the US I was dumbfounded when a payment terminal asked for my zip code...of course i didn't have one and my card was rejected.

[vishnugupta]

It’s tap to pay almost everywhere in the Netherlands. Apple Pay works like charm.

[irrational]

The US has contactless payment with a chip on the card too, but this is different.

[hackmiester]

How? I was under the impression this tech was the same. Just like our cards’ chips are compatible.

[woobar]

It is different in way that same technology now let you use your phone to accept payment via tap. Not just to pay.

[tluyben2]

Yep, and I haven’t ‘dipped’ a card for years now to pay. With the high value payments going up for contactless, I might forget my pin code altogether.

[andrewaylett]

At least in the UK, the increase in the contactless limit is accompanied by an increase in the frequency at which you're asked to confirm your card using chip+pin.

However, most merchants now have terminals that accept contactless mobile payments without a limit -- Tesco were one of the last to upgrade. So if you pay with your phone then you're back at risk of forgetting your pin.

I'd quite like it if there were some mechanism for setting device spend limits, as my smartwatch will do payments but with only a pattern for security it doesn't matter that I'd be happy only using it for sub-£5 payments: it'll quite happily authorise much more.

[munk-a]

While on our first pandemic vacation about three months back I had to acquire local currency and briefly froze in front of the ATM as it'd been over a year and a half since I'd entered that PIN anywhere. I had to mentally cycle through a few I've used over the years until I remembered the current one.

[peoplefromibiza]

In Italy RFID payments have been a thing since 1989

Unfortunately this is one of those cases where being among early adopters wasn't an advantage, in many areas of Italy cash is still the only viable payment method.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepass

[pelorat]

> in many areas of Italy cash is still the only viable payment method.

cough tax avoidance cough

[peoplefromibiza]

As an Italian I can't disagree, cabs not accepting credit cards infuriate me evrytime, but there's also a strong cultural resistance to change here.

Also friction plays a part, Italy is the second oldest country in the World on average.

My mom uses electronic payments, but I haven't been able to teach her how to pay online or "tap to pay" no matter how hard I tried.

I won't even start to talk about my dad, who doesn't even own a smartphone or a mobile phone before the smart ones existed.

They prefer to go to the ATM and pay cash, their lifestyle is very far from globalized even though they are strongly against tax evasion and always ask for their receipt.

Ironically I've know about Telepass because my parents have been using it for as long as I can remember.

My guess is that they trust Telepass because it's backed by a (former) public institution, Autostrade, but they don't trust mobile phone manufacturers or payment processor companies as much.

I'm not sure they are completely wrong.

[xeromal]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softcard

I used this payment processor in utah in the early 2010s at Jamba Juices and a few other random places. It was pretty sweet but its name was Isis and that was right around the time Isis started becoming big and I believe they ended up dying off.

[dylan604]

Typically, when I see a company changing names, I tend to think they've fucked up something so badly in the past that they hope a name change will remove that stinnk. When you see a name change like this, you're like "yup, good move. hope you did it fast enough!"

Avoiding the Isis name was even enough to change the story line for the animated show Archer.

[seanmcdirmid]

When I visited Australia in 2015, I was really impressed with the ubiquity and speed of TAP to pay. We aren't quite their in the USA yet, but I do 90% of my payments outside using my Apple watch (with a bit of a lag that I didn't see in Aus). At least we aren't stuck using QR codes.

[madeofpalk]

2011 was when I saw country McDonalds adopt contactless in Australia. From then it was a pretty quick adoption for it to be ubiquitous.

I'm currently on a trip back to Australia and I forgot my wallet (!!), but it's fine because I just use Apple Pay everywhere. It's never once been a problem.

[zikduruqe]

I remember doing a POC using a Samsung device for NFC ticketing for BART back in 2004.

[TAKEMYMONEY]

Technically Speedpass was RFID, Apple Pay and most modern tap-to-pay tech uses NFC

[kingkawn]

Had speedpass back when it first came out, great technology for the time

[Spivak]

That’s not at all comparable since you’re not really paying. By that logic we’ve had contactless payments for hundreds of years in the form of opening a tab at a merchant.

[lmz]

That's sounds like stored value or contactless debit. What do you mean "not really paying"?

[Spivak]

You're not actually initiating a transfer of money. Sure, it feels like that but in reality they're just storing your CC info and debiting you either in advance (like gas) or settling up (like hotels). You have to have a prior relationship with the company handling your account and figure out a secondary out-of-band payment flow. The fob doesn't really add anything except as a holder of your account id.

The only thing they have in common is the physical action of "boop boop" at a terminal or scanner.

[MattRix]

I can see their point. If you already paid in advance, you aren’t really paying again when it subtracts the value from your account.

[wizzwizz4]

It's more like a contactless gift card: since you can't use your change for purchasing something different, the payment is in the purchase of the gift card.

It's still got the "contactless" part, though.

[queuebert]

And even when I pay cash, I just throw it at them and run, so no contact there either.

[beambot]

PayPal was founded on this premise in 1998: Contactless payments through Palm Pilots. Wasn't a new idea at that time either.

[snapetom]

I distinctly remember, over ten years ago, paying with PayPal at a restaurant in Austin. That's why I have a profile pic on PayPal. The waitress requested I take one as it was the biometric ID method used.

I'm pretty sure it was a tap to pay with the app. I can't remember if the other device was also iOS. It was definitely not the kludgy QR codes like it is now.

I thought it was so cool, but it never caught on. I read a while later that PayPal was licensing that tech and let the license expire.

[jiggawatts]

I haven’t used cash in Australia in about 5 years, maybe longer.

[dathinab]

If Apple wouldn't have effectively crippler innovation by not providing NFC (and later one locking it down) we probably would have contact less payment and many other similar services by now everywhere.

I know of multiple pilot projects and startups which where basically killed (or majorly revamped) because just supporting Android wasn't viable and Apples not showing any intention to support NFC.

The fact that the NFC we have now is missing a major feature of original NFC isn't helping either (the ability to act as a NFC card if the device it's embedded in is powered of/out of battery).