[chatmasta]

I remember when I was a teenager working the register at a local store. The power went out one day, and we processed credit cards with a device that imprinted the embossed card number onto a paper for later reconciliation.

That wouldn’t work today for a number of reasons but it was cool to see that kind of backup plan in place.

[phinnaeus]

I’ve seen cc impression machines within the past 5 years in small town america

[fredoralive]

In the UK the credit / debit cards I've had issued in the last few years have been flat, with details just printed, so that level of manual processing is presumably defunct here.

[OJFord]

Don't forget chip & PIN is state of the art novel tech in the US. (From memory I think it was required here in the UK from Valentine's day^ in something like 2005.)

(^I remember the day better than the year because the ad campaign was something like 'I <3 PIN'.)

[bobthepanda]

that is mostly because major US retailers sued Visa/Mastercard to make it not enforceable via lower interchange fees, since then they would have to change tens of thousands of point-of-sale systems at each one