251–260 of 325 posts
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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.
Installing gas station spyware sounds to fill up sounds like hell.
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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.
In Switzerland we have both. You can pay cash nearly everywhere, or contact less, or using our own transaction system 'twint' usually over the phone linked to any bank account (or even prepaid kinda like PayPal)
What 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.
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…
"The magnetic stripe will start to disappear in 2024 from Mastercard payment cards in regions, such as Europe, where chip cards are already widely used. Banks in the U.S. will no longer be required to issue chip cards with a magnetic stripe, starting in 2027. By 2029, no new Mastercard credit or debit cards will be issued with a magnetic stripe. Prepaid cards in the U.S. and Canada are currently exempt from this chan…
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Partly that, and the USA's much higher car dependence in general. I'd wager the average adult in the USA spends more time in a petrol station than the average European.
Quick googling gave me average US car consumption 25 mpg vs 57 mpg in EU. Edit: Bad googling, sorry. 57 mpg was proposed for new cars.
I meant, for anyone that missed it, that commuting by bus/train/tram/metro is much more common in urban areas in Europe than in the USA.
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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 contac…
Garbage bag? You mean one of those paper thin plastic bags that many big cities in the USA have all but banned?
Does that actually help with the mag strip being read or was that a joke regarding the cards being complete garbage?
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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…
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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).
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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.
For me contactless is my phone or watch.