I love how these assholes are patting themselves on the back for being 20 years behind the rest of the industrialized world.
Fuck you, BastarCard.
Swiping left on magnetic stripes
191–200 of 325 posts
Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes
#192What a sad day. Swipes were far more user friendly and the failure rate with reading these chips is unreal. Here's to hoping the next "upgrade" isn't a nightmare.
OK Gramps.
Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes
#193Earlier 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…
The few times contactless has not worked you just put in the same card in the chip slot (why would it be two different cards?).
Besides, I don't see how your situation is an argument for mag swipe. Are you saying contactless fails more than mag swipes? Or that mag swipe is faster than contactless/chip? Absolutely not my experience in either way.
Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes
#194What a sad day. Swipes were far more user friendly and the failure rate with reading these chips is unreal. Here's to hoping the next "upgrade" isn't a nightmare.
How so? There's no swipe motion you need to get right; just slide in the card and done?
Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes
#195Why 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…
The QFC (which is Kroger's AFAIK) near me finally started allowing NFC payments sometime in 2020. Part of me wonders if covid and wanting less contact motivated that because the actual terminals themselves didn't change but rather they just enabled the NFC functionality.
Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I honestly don’t even recall the time when the magnetic stripe was needed. Every time I've been to the US it's still magnetic stripe in places like restaurants/bars where the wait staff whisk your card away and then 4 days later the charge ends up appearing on your card. I saw chip and pin (or sometimes the odd chip and sign) appearing in the big shops/chains like walgreens though so I guess it's slowly changing. I…
For us ‘Mericans, all credit card transactions at a chip reader are chip+signature. We typically only have PIN numbers configured for debit cards. And most of those can be processed successfully without providing the PIN by pressing the credit button on the terminal.
No wonder people hate it then.
Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes
#197Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I honestly don’t even recall the time when the magnetic stripe was needed. Every time I've been to the US it's still magnetic stripe in places like restaurants/bars where the wait staff whisk your card away and then 4 days later the charge ends up appearing on your card. I saw chip and pin (or sometimes the odd chip and sign) appearing in the big shops/chains like walgreens though so I guess it's slowly changing. I…
For us ‘Mericans, all credit card transactions at a chip reader are chip+signature. We typically only have PIN numbers configured for debit cards. And most of those can be processed successfully without providing the PIN by pressing the credit button on the terminal.
Although, in many cases signatures aren’t necessary. Anecdotally, I can only recall having to sign a handful of times in the last five or so years. (Edit: outside of restaurants.)
Also: it’s important to remember that running a debit card as credit isn’t the same thing as using debit. At most banks, your credit limit for debit cards (weird sentence, yeah) is very low: like $500 or so. If you call (and have sufficient funds), they’ll often temporarily raise it for you. (It’s how I paid for school on a debit card when the school could only run it as credit.)
Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
My, really setting themselves aggressive targets huh.
At least in Australia the magnetic stripe is already gone for all intents and purposes. I can't remember the last time I used it. The American schedule may be a little aggressive though, you guys still use cheques extensively.
Define extensively. Anybody who pays with checks in situations where credit cards or cash can be used is gonna get funny looks, unless they’re a little old lady.
Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes
#200Earlier 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…
It’s not a problem with the tech — just a matter of time and adoption. Swipe cards used to be just as problematic back in the day. Many places didn’t accept them either, and then if they did, it took a lengthy dial-up connection to process. Sometimes it would fail and retry multiples times, and if it still didn’t work, the cashier would grab one of these out from under the counter: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon…
It's astounding how slow the rollout is in the US. I'm 22 and in Australia and I have never used a magnetic strip card and have used the insert chip method less than 10 times. Not a single card machine does not support contactless and only weird edge cases like refunds require you to insert your card.