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Swiping left on magnetic stripes

mastercard.com

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Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#201

Post by barsonme »

Kiro wrote: post #71
hamburgerwah wrote: post #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.

Where do you live? I haven't seen a card terminal that can't do chip in like 15 years. The old terminals that need to be upgraded are the ones that can't do contactless but even those are rare. A card terminal that can only do magnetic seems really alien and ancient.

Lots of Jimmy Johns in my area (circa 2012) only had swipe readers for some reason. But around 2014 they started upgrading to chip readers.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#202

Post by SilverRed »

xattt wrote: post #81
Johnie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about who is paying for that fraud. Prior to EMV liability shift, Banks paid for the fraud. After Liability Shift, merchants are paying for fraud using magstripe. Merchants don't want to be responsible for the fraud, so they are incentivized to get rid of the mag stripe.

I really doubt that banks will pass on the savings onto the consumer of fraud mitigation once EMV is fully implemented.

Who cares? Just taking the profits away from criminals would be good enough.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#203

Post by dazc »

onion2k wrote: post #168
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…

Here in the UK everywhere accepts chip and contactless. It rarely fails, and when it does everyone assumes its the card reader rather than the card. It's common for people to claim they'll stop shopping in places where the card readers fail, which means there's an incentive for retailers to keep them well maintained.

Anecdotally, the machines fail quite often in cabs.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#204

Post by SilverRed »

jjk166 wrote: post #135
FridayoLeary wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>painful transition How painful could it possibly be to go and buy a new card reader? Why doesn't the payments provider offer them as part of the service? They are not so expensive.

The reader may be cheap, but the things its integrated with aren't. If it costs $20k to replace a gas pump and you have a half dozen pumps, the cost of replacing them might be comparable to the value of the gas station. A grocery store point of sale system is even more expensive, around $40k a pop. Maybe you're lucky and the manufacturer of your current setup has made it in such a way that the card reader can be swap…

>the manufacturer of your current setup has made it in such a way that the card reader can be swapped out without replacing the entire thing, but that's a big if.

This seems to be universal in Australia. Even the mega store self serve integrated systems have a separate machine mounted on for processing card payments.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#205

Post by barsonme »

yosito wrote: post #180
bryanthompson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some reasons it still exists, however, it is no longer required and merchants/POS systems ought to start phasing it out. In the US, the way we do tip on receipt is a lot more natural if you're asking for a signature. Without a signature, you're just handing someone a tip option, which is awkward with our current way of doing things. Some merchants opt to keep signature enabled because it gives them a fuzzy…

> In the US, the way we do tip on receipt is a lot more natural American in Hungary. Here tipping isn't expected like it is in the US. But when you pay, they bring the terminal to your table with the check, then you tell them that you want to add a tip and how much, and they type the total into the terminal before you tap your phone or card. Perfectly natural.

You omitted a very important part of their comment:

> if you're asking for a signature.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#206

Post by Animats »

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:…

Where’s the bottleneck?

Gas stations. The gas station industry has been avoiding upgrading pumps. It's expensive. Retail checkouts usually just need a replacement of the desktop unit, but gas pumps require actual modification. They got a 3-year delay, until October 2020. Then April 17, 2021. Then they got hit by the coronavirus epidemic.

The upgrade has to be done by a qualified installer; you don't want someone who doesn't know what each wire does mucking about with the electrical innards of a gasoline pump. There isn't a huge supply of trained gas pump upgraders. There are many pump variations, and some can't be upgraded at all. Gas pumps often don't have an Internet connection, just a 2-wire twisted pair running RS-422 or something. The chip card readers, inevitably, want full Internet connectivity. Which means getting CAT-5 out to the pump. Which sometimes runs into CAT-5 length limitations. The older systems sometimes worked over dial-up. Average cost per pump is about $6,000.

Gilbarco/Veeder-Root has a product which is basically a pair of DSL modems to allow using the existing 2-wire connection to carry the Internet out to the pump.[1] Amusingly, they'll give you this for free if you buy their product for running ads on the pump.

And, of course, it's all "cloud-enabled".

And that's why there's such a holdup.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtMxhmJh8V0

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#207

Post by ginko »

a254613e wrote: post #179
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…

Not just US. Take for example Germany, the largest country in EU and most places are cash-only. Although due to coronavirus adoption of different payment methods (apple pay, contactless, card, etc) has been increasing.

That's different though. It's one thing to only support ancient tech for cashless payment and another to stay cash-only. I wouldn't call that backwards. It's just a choice.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#208

Post by 8fingerlouie »

Animats wrote: post #206
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:…

Where’s the bottleneck? Gas stations. The gas station industry has been avoiding upgrading pumps. It's expensive. Retail checkouts usually just need a replacement of the desktop unit, but gas pumps require actual modification. They got a 3-year delay, until October 2020. Then April 17, 2021. Then they got hit by the coronavirus epidemic. The upgrade has to be done by a qualified installer; you don't want someone who…

In Europe (Scandinavia at least), Gas stations use contactless, and most gas/oil companies have a dedicated app (think loyalty card) that can also handle payment for you over the internet.

It uses GPS, so when you open the app at a gas station it already knows where you are, and simply asks you which pump you want to unlock.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#209

Post by aj3 »

kzrdude wrote: post #103

I've wondered if I shouldn't just rip off the magnetic stripe - I never use it, and it's just a security risk.

It's a security risk even if you don't use it. Someone just seeing your card briefly could copy it as the stripe has the same info that's printed on it.

Incidentally, this discussion is filled with people who have no idea how payments are authorized.

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