What happens when you swipe a credit card • Hacker News Board

Re: What happens when you swipe a credit card

#171

Post by cmurf » Mon, Mar 06, 2017, 7:41 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #111

cmurf wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if we really believed in the free market and consumer protection, there'd be a law requiring the total transaction cost be printed on the sales slip. Whether the merchant pays it or passes it onto the consumer would be up to the merchant, but the amount would appear on the slip so the consumer sees these costs and who is paying for it. What we really have is mercantilism, where the issuer by contract disallows f…

> Well if we really believed in the free market and consumer protection, there'd be a law requiring the total transaction cost be printed on the sales slip. So "if we really believed in the free market", we should regulate the details of how a private transaction can take place? Leaving aside any other aspects of that proposal, whether positive or negative, it doesn't seem reasonable to describe it as "free market".

Free markets are not devoid of regulation; in fact free markets are not naturally occurring, it is created by regulation. Otherwise you end up with all kinds of obfuscation, which makes it impossible for people to make informed decisions.

Re: What happens when you swipe a credit card

#172

Post by cmurf » Mon, Mar 06, 2017, 7:45 PM UTC

JoBrad wrote: post #110

cmurf wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if we really believed in the free market and consumer protection, there'd be a law requiring the total transaction cost be printed on the sales slip. Whether the merchant pays it or passes it onto the consumer would be up to the merchant, but the amount would appear on the slip so the consumer sees these costs and who is paying for it. What we really have is mercantilism, where the issuer by contract disallows f…

I'm not sure I follow you. Are you suggesting that we should require merchants to print a breakout of all of the upstream fees on your receipt?

Yes. And as a precondition that this information is exposed by the issuer when the authorization is created so the POS can provide the correct information. Right now this is obscured, the merchant doesn't know what fees applied to which cards until their monthly closing statement.

Re: What happens when you swipe a credit card

#173

Post by theandrewbailey » Mon, Mar 06, 2017, 8:14 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #140

IanCal wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expired cards and active cards generally have the same card number. I've certainly had multiple cards with the same long number across them. If you have to write the expiry date on anyway then why not use it?

Wait, I thought the expiration date was just theoretical. Nobody keeps the same card number that long without having the card compromised, do they? :)

All my debit cards have had the same number on them for the past 5 years (at least). No part of it is my account number. I know it by memory. I have no evidence that it's been compromised.

Re: What happens when you swipe a credit card

#174

Post by theandrewbailey » Mon, Mar 06, 2017, 8:29 PM UTC

leeoniya wrote: post #13

chrisseaton wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chip cards replaced swiping over a decade ago, and a couple of years ago contactless replaced chip cards for most purposes. Does anyone literally swipe a credit card any more? I can't remember seeing it done in years except in some parts of Europe.

well, there's the rest of the world, and there's the US, where chip cards are recent and still lack chip+pin requirement for now. we still use imperial units, too! not to mention the worst (read: non-existent) maternity-leave laws on earth - worse than many less developed countries.

At least the USA doesn't drive on the left side of the road.

Re: What happens when you swipe a credit card

#175

Post by woliveirajr » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 6:22 PM UTC

bigbugbag wrote: post #142

> What happens when you swipe a credit card People look at you funny for not knowing how a credit card has worked for the last 30+ years. Here chips got introduced mid-80's and all cards had chips circa early-90's. Why did it take so long for credit card to feature chips in the US ? Because it took a while for CIA's in-q-tel to take over control of gemplus, the company who owned the smart card technology, which happe…

And I'm really curious about the security of tokens used to store private keys... in Brazil, at least, many tokens are in the form of cards, with gemalto being the main supplier.

Re: What happens when you swipe a credit card

#176

Post by arcdigital » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 3:44 AM UTC

Hannan wrote: post #94

nodesocket wrote: post #57

Does anybody know if using Stripe if we can pass the 2.9% fee onto our customers? We offer customized consulting plans that vary and typically in the thousands, so thinking of just adding a 3% credit card processing fee to the invoice for clients that use card. Researching around the net, it seems for traditional brick and mortar, some issuers don't allow you to charge a percentage based card processing fee. Any idea…

It's complicated and depends on things like where you're charging and whether or not it's a "fee" for using the card vs. offering a cash discount (how these are not essentially equivalent is beyond me): Sections 1.5.4.2 & 5.6 https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/about-visa/15-April-2... Section 5.11.2 https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/mccom/en-us/documents/... IANAL, etc.

I would check with your ISO/Processor...but you're pretty much fine as long as you charge a generic credit card surcharge and treat all cards the same. You only really get into trouble with Visa/MC/Amex/Discover when you start charging different fees on different transactions.

Source: I used to run a payment gateway & ISO.

Re: What happens when you swipe a credit card

#177

Post by Markoff » Sat, Mar 11, 2017, 11:57 AM UTC

rconti wrote: post #37

Markoff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it really that difficult to touch terminal with your card and put it away? much faster than cash or entering PIN

Parent said "chip card" not "contactless". And the requirement for a PIN (or signature, depending on region) has more to do with amount than with method.

it's pretty much synonym in Europe, it would be very odd bank which would not issue contactless chip cards nowadays

Re: What happens when you swipe a credit card

#178

Post by JoBrad » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 7:10 PM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #172

JoBrad wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow you. Are you suggesting that we should require merchants to print a breakout of all of the upstream fees on your receipt?

Yes. And as a precondition that this information is exposed by the issuer when the authorization is created so the POS can provide the correct information. Right now this is obscured, the merchant doesn't know what fees applied to which cards until their monthly closing statement.

That's a lot of info to have to expose in a very short period of time. It also would involve integrating payment/contract info into systems that probably have no knowledge of it, today. How many APIs do you know of that access contract payment details every time they are accessed?