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Swiping left on magnetic stripes

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Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#301

Post by devilbunny »

ehnto wrote: post #217
Animats wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the US, it's much more the norm to start the fuel running, then go inside and buy whatever you need, and come back out to find that your car is full and you can simply drive off. Do Australian pumps not have the little latch to allow fuel to keep running without someone squeezing the handle the entire time?

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#302

Post by aidenn0 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #236
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…

All of my cards have the tap to pay symbol, so all I do is tap the card and it works pretty much every time. If it does not, then I insert it into the chip reader. Since cards can have tap to pay, chip, and stripe all on the same card, I do not see the uncertainty in merchants supporting it to be an Achilles heel since you will have the card anyway. It might be an Achilles heel for Apple Pay/Google Pay, but not conta…

I have run into terminals where if you do tap to pay and it fails, it won't accept the chip until the cashier re-runs the transaction. This has caused me to just not use tap to pay.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#303

Post by ehnto »

devilbunny wrote: post #301
ehnto wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the US, it's much more the norm to start the fuel running, then go inside and buy whatever you need, and come back out to find that your car is full and you can simply drive off. Do Australian pumps not have the little latch to allow fuel to keep running without someone squeezing the handle the entire time?

Yeah you're not allowed to leave the pump running unattended as far as I know, you have to hold down the pump at all gas stations I've been to.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#304

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

ehnto wrote: post #217
Animats wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This isn’t the case in Tasmania, since nearly nothing is open here 24hrs almost all fuel stations have a pay station located by the building, rather than at each pump.

Recently one independent has built a few fuel only prepaid only fuel stops, no minimart and no staff.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#305

Post by lotsofpulp »

whimsicalism wrote: post #297
lotsofpulp wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Are there any advantages of Venmo over Zelle?

Zelle took a long time to be developed, so it has essentially no network effects - most people don't have Zelle. Zelle can only be used by people who have banks that support Zelle, which many people do not (my bank for instance does not support Zelle, nor does my SO's - so we have no way of using Zelle to transfer money between each other.) Zelle doesn't allow you to use credit card AFAIK. Zelle doesn't have QR code…

Interesting. I would expect most people in the US to have Zelle due to the market share of the big banks, and the extensive list of Zelle participants:

https://www.zellepay.com/get-started

As far as I know, you do not have to do anything other than let your bank know the phone number/email to associate with the account you want to send/receive money to.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#306

Post by whimsicalism »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #305
whimsicalism wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zelle took a long time to be developed, so it has essentially no network effects - most people don't have Zelle. Zelle can only be used by people who have banks that support Zelle, which many people do not (my bank for instance does not support Zelle, nor does my SO's - so we have no way of using Zelle to transfer money between each other.) Zelle doesn't allow you to use credit card AFAIK. Zelle doesn't have QR code…

Interesting. I would expect most people in the US to have Zelle due to the market share of the big banks, and the extensive list of Zelle participants: https://www.zellepay.com/get-started As far as I know, you do not have to do anything other than let your bank know the phone number/email to associate with the account you want to send/receive money to.

> As far as I know, you do not have to do anything other than let your bank know the phone number/email to associate with the account you want to send/receive money to.

Yes, if your bank supports Zelle (which as I said, mine doesn't).

You can look at the numbers around this - way more people know about and use venmo than zelle.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#307

Post by djrogers »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #208
Animats wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Both of which will still require pumps to be replaced.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#308

Post by djrogers »

irrational wrote: post #212
Animats wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The dumb thing is they have the tech to do it - when they rolled out their new chip readers several years ago, I was in a store where they had accidentally left the contactless reader on for a day or two, and was able to use ApplePay.

Next time I went back the reader just feigned ignorance.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#309

Post by djrogers »

Johnie wrote: post #50
poopypoopington wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate – who cares? We've had magnetic strips for decades and they work fine. Yes, they're insecure but anti-fraud measures taken by the bank can mitigate that. If this helps more stores accept payments without having a painful transition isn't that worth it? I use Apple Pay most places but I don't mind having to use a strip once in a while or if others do.

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.

In both of those cases, consumers are paying for fraud.

Re: Swiping left on magnetic stripes

#310

Post by EvanAnderson »

devilbunny wrote: post #301
ehnto wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the US, it's much more the norm to start the fuel running, then go inside and buy whatever you need, and come back out to find that your car is full and you can simply drive off. Do Australian pumps not have the little latch to allow fuel to keep running without someone squeezing the handle the entire time?

Too many stations in my area of the US (western Ohio) allow this. I was a cashier at my family's independent gas station for a number of years, and it always pissed off customers when we stopped the dispenser when they walked away / got in their car / etc. It's a legitimate safety and environmental hazard (some hold-open latches don't disengage reliably on some filler necks leading to gasoline rolling out of the tank onto the ground). People get used to lax non-safety conscious stations and then act like jerks to the employees in stations who do care.
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