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Swiping left on magnetic stripes

mastercard.com

31–40 of 325 posts

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#31
post #12

Why does it take so long? Where’s the bottleneck? Where I lived over the last years (two countries in Europe), I don’t even have to use the physical card. I just use contactless payments with the phone. Prior to that, it was contactless with card. Even ATMs work with contactless (not all, yet). Prior to that, it was chip. I honestly don’t even recall the time when the magnetic stripe was needed. (edit) Think of this:…

America. They dragged their heels switching to chips.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#32
post #12

Why does it take so long? Where’s the bottleneck? Where I lived over the last years (two countries in Europe), I don’t even have to use the physical card. I just use contactless payments with the phone. Prior to that, it was contactless with card. Even ATMs work with contactless (not all, yet). Prior to that, it was chip. I honestly don’t even recall the time when the magnetic stripe was needed. (edit) Think of this:…

The only reason I’ve started using my card lately is because Face ID is harder with a mask on.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#34
post #12

Why does it take so long? Where’s the bottleneck? Where I lived over the last years (two countries in Europe), I don’t even have to use the physical card. I just use contactless payments with the phone. Prior to that, it was contactless with card. Even ATMs work with contactless (not all, yet). Prior to that, it was chip. I honestly don’t even recall the time when the magnetic stripe was needed. (edit) Think of this:…

There’s always that old book shop that doesn’t have the latest and greatest yet. And this type of support is typically enforced by contracts; eg if you buy some device that accepts MasterCard, they promise it will be supported for at least 10 years.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#35
post #12

Why does it take so long? Where’s the bottleneck? Where I lived over the last years (two countries in Europe), I don’t even have to use the physical card. I just use contactless payments with the phone. Prior to that, it was contactless with card. Even ATMs work with contactless (not all, yet). Prior to that, it was chip. I honestly don’t even recall the time when the magnetic stripe was needed. (edit) Think of this:…

The USA is a big holdup. I just traveled across the country and there are still filling (petrol) stations where the only card reader is stripe. See also other comments about the stripe being a fallback for chip as chip readers on POS terminals seem to be more fragile than magnetic stripe readers.

FWIW, Contactless is very hit-or-miss for me in the US; about 1/3 the time it just doesn't work at all (even with multiple retries), and that's when the terminal has one. Was picking up something at the corner store the other day, realized I didn't have my wallet and contactless just didn't work with the phone at all for some reason.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#36
> By 2033, no Mastercard credit and debit cards will have magnetic stripes

I wouldn't be surprised if, by 2033, people will be identified using biometrics everywhere, so you can pay with your hand print or face scan.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#37
Still a LOT of merchants that need to upgrade equipment to do chip cards including some large franchises. There is a real problem that chip reading devices do not yet have anywhere near the longevity that magswipe use does. Machines go out of service for repair and cleaning after as little as a month of use in busy locations. Magstripe machines typically lasted 12 months plus before needing attention.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#38
post #6

So most of my current cards (in Europe) have 3 interaction methods: In order of decreasing readability/communication reliability: 1. Magnetic stripe 2. NFC 3. EMV The EMV ("chip") method is the least insecure, but lately all of my cards have been started oxidating. And it seems like the pogo pins in almost all readers also started wearing out too. Chip reader failures have become very common lately. It's very common…

>it's cleartext, after all

What do you mean by "cleartext" exactly ? When I pay using my card with NFC, it's not really cleartext.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#39
post #28
post #12

Why does it take so long? Where’s the bottleneck? Where I lived over the last years (two countries in Europe), I don’t even have to use the physical card. I just use contactless payments with the phone. Prior to that, it was contactless with card. Even ATMs work with contactless (not all, yet). Prior to that, it was chip. I honestly don’t even recall the time when the magnetic stripe was needed. (edit) Think of this:…

>I honestly don’t even recall the time when the magnetic strip was needed. for when you fly over to the US and need to use your card

Assuming US starts to let people in again.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To echo my other comment: my chip broke on my debit card and the card refused to work with magstripe only (and it was broken in a way were the NFC thing also no longer functioned). So not sure if the magstripe has any functionality in the SEPA region based on that experience.

I think the magstripe is disabled in my region, I've never managed to use it on any of my cards. I tried testing it out to see if it even was functional. Surely they must work as I've heard quite a few stories of card skimmers...

There is definitely a card number on the magstripe on it, but i think you cannot make a transaction with it in the SEPA region. So you need to "clone" that card and make a transaction with it in a non SEPA region country and that is disabled by default on debit cards (not credit cards though).
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