Seriously? Americans haven't push to chip yet? Other country already fully adopted chip and starting to move on to NFC. Heck my country even forces all banks to issue chipped ATM cards. Before that, we already have chipped credit and debit cards with strip too.
Other than this, I'm quite surprised by the method practice in USA, so you won't be entering your PIN but your signature instead. Just what kind of security are we talking here? Doesn't this defeats the purpose of being more secure with your card? Is it really that hard to remember 4 or 6 PIN?
This has been an issue in the United States for a very, very, very, long time. While I do agree that it's wonderful that we're finally doing something about the lack of card security in the country, I do understand the reasons that banks have waited, it's very expensive to implement. You have to remember the money is the basic driving force of all, and if people think something is part of unnecessary spending, they're not going to push for it.
The legislation in this country is old and doesn't understand the need to improve the security of American banks, but, they do understand cost analysis, the chip and pin system seems like a waste of money, and that's they're final say; and because representatives, represent their wallets more than their citizens, it takes ages for any form of innovation to reach completion.
I agree it's a shit fact that we had to wait this long, but it's not a WTF moment. The WTF moment comes from the population of the US every time congress approves another trillion dollar budget for the Military.
Years ago, American Express implemented chips in their cards. Then they stopped for certain cards. Now they started again. Not sure what the story is behind that. But I have an AMEX in my hand right now that has a chip in it.
All my bank cards and credit cards have been chipped for over 10 years + all of them are now contactless (for payments up to £20), which is a nice little time saver!
So 2025 for contactless payment in the USA? :p
P.S. it's nice to actually be ahead on something for once.
My opinion is that here in the USA it is finally being implemented because of the data breaches, while it's more secure it also off loads some of the liability for fraud from the card issuer to the retail merchant and as a merchant myself I welcome the change because in the last 10 years we've watched our sales payment method move from cash/check/credit card to almost 85% credit/debit cards, 5% checks, and 10% cash...in a few more years I expect to be 100% credit/debit simply because that's how the financial institutions and consumers want to conduct business it's easier for the consumer and much more profitable for the financial institutions, the merchant caught in the middle has very little choice in the matter.
Of course I can remember a time when we used these for credit card transactions....lol
That uses RFID, right? Isn't that insecure in itself?
Personally, I only use my phone to pay for things (NFC), and if I can't, I just use cash. I prefer not to use a card unless I must.
It's also funny that you complain about needing to use signatures versus pins - at the store I work at, they recently changed it so that if the payment is under $50 you don't have to sign. Obviously, if you have a debit card, you still have a pin that you have to use.
I've never had identity fraud, so I don't know how easy it is to cancel payments, but I suppose trying to cancel a credit payment is easier on the end user than debit payments. It's also easier to catch in that regard because they have to see how much they spent, and then they can know if something wrong happened. Still, yeah, it's bad that there's not an extra level of security in there to counter that, because some people just don't care anyways.
Back in the old days when cash was king and credit cards were a novelty credit cards were manually processed just like checks, basically you put the card in the machine and overlay a paper form over the card then moved the handle from side to side to imprint the card info (on face of card) and the merchant info (on plate screwed to machine) on to the paper form, it was a 3 piece form, one copy went to the customer as a receipt, one copy was for the merchants records, and one copy went to the bank as a deposit ticket.
Back then credit card had to be processed by the merchants bank and took days to receive the money, today I can do a transaction, and before the customer drives off run a batch on our terminal and before the customer is home I have the money in my account.
LOL...yeah it was just different than today because no one used a credit card back then except businessmen/salesmen who were on a company expense account, the current swipe system most merchants use is the best/easiest method of payment, it's quick but not very secure.
The one thing credit cards has changed that I see is what I call "sticker shock", back when people had to open their wallets and pay in cash or write a check it gave them time to think about the amount of money they were spending, now with credit/debit cards people are willing to pay more for items since they don't really register the transaction in their minds until that monthly statement comes in the mail or they pay the statement on-line, and there are more hidden charges or built-in charges in everything we buy because of using credit/debit cards because most merchants use 3rd party merchant services to process the payments and deposit the money in the merchants bank account, those 3rd party businesses suck a percentage of the transaction off the top for their services and the consumer gets to pay that in the form of slightly higher prices built in the cost of goods.
Well, we're talking about a country where its politicians are only just now discovering encryption, so something like chip credit cards becoming a norm is quite far-fetched.
small tangent cash is king. i personally hate credit cards that use magnetic strip and a pin (aka current american system account number expiration date and a 3 digit code pin optional)and dont have any safety measures for the owner of the card.
the chip system would be good if used in conjunction with the strip and a pin required. but then online shopping would be out of the question because now you must have a strip reader and a chip reader to make any transactions. ( full consumer safety no chip, strip and pin no purchases will be authorized does not matter if you have the account number or not.) now we hit a road block we have a safer card for the consumer that can not be faked as easy but limits where we can use it. so in my mind the chip and strip option is out.
ok well lets take a quick look at a master account that can link all credit card's and all digital currency together (zifter pay network is a good example) hardware based account (that ideally generates new identification numbers for every transaction but links back to a central account.) in theory this is great for consumer privacy mostly safe as the master account is never exposed directly while shopping. and allows use of many different payment options with out a lot of hassle. major downsides are constant need of bookkeeping. figuring out how to bill account of customers that use a credit company and not a digital currency. and how to prevent fraud if the master account container is stolen and cloned. and god forbid how to recover funds from a lost master account.
in my mind cash will be king forever and if you cant afford it now then you cant buy it. loans should only exist for houses and cars. and i am one of those people that dont like banks at all and love direct cash payments to the person you are buying the good's or services from. ( i know it is not possible to do this all the time but i dont like having to pay a middle man a cut of money so i can buy what i need.) currently i use throw away cards for all of my online transactions and i never reload the a card i put exactly how much the item and shipping will be on the card so once i buy something the remaining balance is 0. hassle yes worth the piece of mind yes.
