Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by chollida1 4596 days ago
> They get around it by being in the US, where there's virtually no chip-and-pin cards or readers

Really? I'm very surprised. Canada has moved over many years ago. I thought we'd be following the US here.

Is chip and pin in the works? ie is this a stop gap for the next year or two until its rolled out or is the US just not bothering with it?
1 comments
msbarnett 4596 days ago
> Really? I'm very surprised. Canada has moved over many years ago. I thought we'd be following the US here.

The US banking system is incredibly antiquated compared to Canada's (and much of the rest of the world's).

link
refurb 4596 days ago
That's because you need Royal Assent in order to be a bank in Canada. Unlike the US that has hundreds (if not thousands) of banks, Canada only has 5 (or is it 6 now?) massive banks.

Having only a few big banks makes it much easier to roll out new technology.

link
msbarnett 4596 days ago
> That's because you need Royal Assent in order to be a bank in Canada. Unlike the US that has hundreds (if not thousands) of banks, Canada only has 5 (or is it 6 now?) massive banks.

This isn't really accurate, in that creating a bank nowadays requires only conformation to The Bank Act, not any royal (or by-proxy Governor General) consent. There are 44 domestic or domestic-subsidiary-of-foreign-corporation Schedule 1 banks in Canada, and 600+ credit unions. The big 5 dominate, but more for historical reasons than anything else.

The long prevalence of things like chip-and-pin and email money transfers and other modern amenities that are just starting to show up in the US has more to do with a marked preference for standardization governed by industry consortiums like Interac in Canada, rather than multiple competing, incompatible credit networks that debit piggybacks on top of, I suspect.

link
baudehlo 4595 days ago
But all the credit unions are owned by desjardins if I recall correctly.
link
msbarnett 4595 days ago
Most credit unions in Quebec are part of the Desjardins group. They don't seem especially widespread outside of Quebec.

Quickly glancing at the ownership of 9 of the 10 largest credit unions outside of Quebec, 8 of the 9 were unrelated to Desjardins. The 4th largest (Meridian Credit of Ontario) was the sole exception. I couldn't find info on the 9th largest, Cambrian Credit of Manitoba.

link