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Swiping left on magnetic stripes

mastercard.com

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Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#111

Post by kergonath »

nashashmi wrote: post #51

Of the three modes nfc is my favorite, takes less time, but also works less reliably. Chip takes the longest time. And I keep removing it early out of habit. And stripe is the least used. But works the best.

Yeah, it was very confusing the first time I went to the US for more than a couple of days. When getting some cash, I was used to putting the card in ATMs and leave it there during the operation. In the US, the ATM did nothing before I took the card out.

When I came back I kept pulling the card early.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#112

Post by asdff »

bovermyer wrote: post #80
ryandrake wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, the Achilles Heel of contactless (or phone/NFC) in the USA is the uncertainty that it's supported and the terrible UX for failure cases. How many times have you had this happen? Your groceries are all rung up and the POS terminal is waiting. You dig out your phone or contactless card and try to invoke the contactless payment system. Nothing's happening. You wave it around a little. Still nothing. Grocery cashier…

I dunno, I've had plenty of instances where swiping a card doesn't work. Sometimes I'd have to put a plastic bag around the card and _then_ swipe it.

Wrapping it in receipt paper works great too

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#113

Post by wcarss »

ryandrake wrote: post #65
aidenn0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yea, the Achilles Heel of contactless (or phone/NFC) in the USA is the uncertainty that it's supported and the terrible UX for failure cases. How many times have you had this happen? Your groceries are all rung up and the POS terminal is waiting. You dig out your phone or contactless card and try to invoke the contactless payment system. Nothing's happening. You wave it around a little. Still nothing. Grocery cashier…

Coming from Canada: my last experience with the stripe, >3-4 years ago, was more like: pull out the card. Swipe it (it doesn't work), Swipe it (it doesn't work), Swipe it slowly (it doesn't work), wrap a garbage bag around it and Swipe it slowly (it doesn't work), Swipe it one last time -- hey, it works! Then, physically sign my name on some piece of paper with a gross pen they had lying around.

vs my last 100 contactless payments: pull out the card, tap. Almost instant happy beep.

I once actually got stuck at La Guardia because of the chip/stripe divide. I hadn't thought to get enough US cash out in advance, and all I had was my Canadian CC and Debit cards. I'd used nothing but the chip on the CC for > a year and didn't realize the magnetic stripe was completely worn off!

I tried several money-changers and ATMs there, and even called my bank -- no options at all. I finally found $5 CAD in my backpack and changed it to USD for bus fare, then caught a local bus to a nearby actual bank, where they were finally able to use my ID and the card number to authorize an advance. It was a heck of a day.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#114

Post by paxys »

perardi wrote: post #87

Why wouldn’t everywhere be supporting contactless payments by this point? And that’s not me being snippy, because perplexingly, Mariano’s, a grocery store chain in Chicago owned by Kroger’s, does not support NFC payments. (I assume Kroger’s stores proper don’t either.) You have to swipe, use the chip, or use the dedicated Kroger Pay app to scan a QR code to use your digital wallet. (Yes, really. Took them forever to…

Because these chains have decades old point of sales systems which no one wants to touch. It isn't simply a matter of swapping out one card reader for another.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#115

Post by moviuro »

drclau wrote: 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:…

Highway tolls didn't have contactless in France until 2016 at best. It's getting better now.

https://www.autoplus.fr/securite-routiere/peages-le-paiement... - only 20 contactless toll gates in all of France in 2016 (gates, not tolls).

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#116

Post by gnicholas »

brundolf wrote: post #15
gnicholas wrote: post #10

I sometimes keep my credit card near my iPhone. I have wondered about the impact on credit cards of the new MagSafe magnets in iPhones. I guess if there aren't magnetic strips anymore, I won't have to worry about it. OTOH, there won't be any backup if the chip doesn't work, which it doesn't always.

There will still be NFC (on the card and, potentially, your phone). That's what I end up using most often these days anyway

I don't actually have NFC on any of my cards, though I do use it on my phone.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#117

Post by derefr »

swiley wrote: post #54
modeless wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're for the merchant. They don't benefit me at all. But merchants were supposed to stop requiring them by now.

They're supposed to help you locate fraudulent transactions after your card is stolen. I guess that benefits the merchant because it makes you less likely to mark legitimate transactions as fraudulent.

In a world where that was actually the goal, you'd presumably be able to see a little image of the signature used, beside each card-provided charge in on your credit card in your online banking portal.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#118

Post by numbsafari »

latchkey wrote: post #107

I'd prefer we just phase out MasterCard. I went to a restaurant the other day. QR code on the receipt. Scan that and it opens up Toast. Toast then connects to Apple Pay, which then connects to my credit card. No less than 3 middlemen to pay the restaurant, is absurd. QRCode -> Wallet on my phone holding stablecoin on a L2 like polygon (which is collecting APY through DeFi) -> Restaurant

Hello Strawman.

Does anyone actually pay the way you described? Honestly?

I either swipe my card or hand it to them to do it for me and call it a day.

I don't have to worry about some cryptojockey screwing up a DeFi contract scheme and all my money being stolen in a non-FDIC insured account. I have fraud protections against card theft.

It ain't perfect, but it's not the electronic equivalent of walking around with me lucky charms in my fanny pack, ripe for the mugging, either.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#119

Post by ohazi »

drclau wrote: 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:…

From the card companies' perspective, the alternative to magstripe isn't contactless, it's contact (the smart card IC embedded in the physical card).

In the US, the card companies convinced merchants to adopt the EMV contact standard by implementing a liability shift that would make the merchants liable for card-present magstripe fraud after a certain date. For merchants using POS terminals, the liability shift happened in 2015, and for gas stations it happened a few months ago (after several delays). EMV contact coverage needs to be essentially 100% before they'll consider getting rid of magstripe completely.

Contactless is an entirely optional sideshow, and is not required by anyone anywhere. It has lots of issues (they somehow managed to make it less secure than magstripe(!), which is kind of appaling) and there are no plans to ever have it supersede EMV contact as the baseline standard.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#120

Post by asdff »

whimsicalism wrote: post #79
judge2020 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe FedNow could take over the mobile payment industry depending on how truly instant it is, and become similar the role WePay takes in China. https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about....

WePay and Alipay have their dual in CashApp and Venmo. The only difference being that Alipay has a lot more institutional support, ie. you can scan your QR code at the grocery store - not the case with Venmo (yet).

Venmo offers debit and you can add the card to your wallet
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