[MrDOS]

In Canada, virtually all credit card transactions now take place via chip insertion, not swiping, and chip transactions require PIN entry, not signing. Unless they get an external numpad to handle such things, this is going to be a security nightmare.

[mrweasel]

It's going to useless in Europe as well. I doubt that the credit card companies will approve a terminal of any kind that relies on the magnet strip, rather than the chip.

I actually had a meeting with a guy from a credit card clearing company yesterday. His comment was that the credit card companies have pretty much given up on introducing chip and PIN to the US. They'll just let the US keep the magnet strip and signature until they can replace the credit card with things like VISA Wallet, NFC or whatever the solution will be.

[jguimont]

In Canada, most in store transaction are using Interac and not credit cards. I wonder when Square will accept both. I guess europeen countries have something similar to Interac as well (french's blue card?).

[mrweasel]

I'm not really sure what Interac is, but a large number of European credit cards aren't credit cards, they are debit cards, issued by your bank. The cards are co-branded VISA or MasterCard. Some countries have they own national cards, Denmark has Dankort, the Netherlands have they own, Finland is dropping theirs I think, and I'm sure there's more.

The point is that the European rules for credit cards is EVERY different from the US. Signatures are no longer valid, you need the PIN and a lot of ATM and terminals will only read the chip. New terminals without chip read won't get approved.

Launching a swipe terminal is catering to a dying marked.

[MrDOS]

Interac is actually the name of a payment services company (they license and operate point-of-sale plastic-handling machines), but the name is most commonly associated with the Canadian variety of debit cards. As in Europe, the cards are issued by the bank, but they're not generally cobranded with any credit card company and payments made with them draw funding directly from your chequing account.

[kelvie]

That's not true, at least not here in Vancouver (though a lot of the Chinese here still tend to prefer cash). Many American banks have quite attractive rewards for using credit cards, so many people opt to use credit cards instead.