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.
I've always suspected they don't, but the cab driver says it's not working so you pay cash that they don't to declare as income in order to minimize their tax liability. I have no real basis for this suspicion though, besides knowing that taxi drivers were notorious for tax dodging before card readers were common (like most cash-based businesses really).
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…
Also some retail places. Home Depot is a huge retailer in the USA, but they will not accept contactless payments. I assume it has something to do with having to pay a higher percent per transaction.
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.
Don’t be surprised. The almighty dollar rules here. If they have to pay a dollar to upgrade the infrastructure to support contactless payments, they won’t do it until they absolutely have to. And even then, if there is a payment machine that doesn’t support contactless payments and it is 5 cents cheaper than one that does, they will go with the one that is cheaper. Multiply that by all the hundreds of thousands of different stores. There is a huge national retailer near me that recently replaced all of their sales terminals. I thought that finally I’d be able to use contactless payments. Nope. The new machines don’t accept contactless payments.
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:…
>Why does it take so long?
I guess one reason is global compatibility. For a global system to hold its promise, a card issued in one country (including developing ones) should be serviceable anywhere else.
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…
Also some retail places. Home Depot is a huge retailer in the USA, but they will not accept contactless payments. I assume it has something to do with having to pay a higher percent per transaction.
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…
Gas stations also have a disincentive to have you pay at the pump. They want you to walk in and buy from the mini-market, at least here in Australia the petrol was a loss-leader for a long time. They made all their money from the in store mini-market. All petrol stations here are essentially convenience stores with a gas station attached to get you in the door.
We have had pay at the pump before, but they got rid of it, and even brand new stations don't have it so it's not just upgrading the pumps.
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…
That's interesting, maybe we adopted contactless payments faster in part because in our gas stations you'd usually pay inside the shop. I have to think that was only one of many reasons, though.
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…
It never occurred to me how much infrastructure there was in a gas station. Talking about the 99% invisible, really.
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…
I can hardly imagine configuring my everyday carry so that a payment card is more accessible than my phone.
The latter is like 20 times more frequently used, and I speak as someone who does not use it to pay (at least not directly). Very odd premise, to me.