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> swipe your card

Sadly swiping is being replaced by chipcard.

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> Sadly swiping is being replaced by chipcard.

I see this being downvoted, and I'm wondering if it's not simply just misinterpreted.

Most places in the US I've used chip&pin, the process goes like this:

- arrive at merchant, select goods, get total.

- look for a sign that says chip is not enabled.

- failing that, move assuredly towards the chip reader and keep an eye on the cashier to ensure he or she doesn't move to stop you.

- put card in reader (if enabled you can do this at any time - but doing it earlier won't save you time)

- wait 2-10s while the reader figures out what to do

- approve whatever you need to when it pops up.

- wait 30-60 seconds for the transaction to go through, then find out you miskeyed your pin.

- Repeat previous steps and associated waiting. Ignore eye-rolling of others in line.

- walk out a satisfied customer.

Obviously I drew it out as long as possible there for effect, but I've only ever seen very slow C&P implementations here. I am usually spending up to a minute waiting for the transaction to clear.

By way of comparison, swipe cards take about 3-4 seconds to process. Debit cards with pins take 3-4 seconds + however long it takes you to type in the pin.

So I full understand the "sadly" prepended to the statement.

There are a few local B&M merchants here that are using a specific model of chip readers, if recollection serves me correctly they're all readers from First Data, that are astonishingly fast -- at least compared to the all the others, which you've quite-accurately described.

Every time I go to the local mom-and-pop butcher shop I commend them on their chip reader's super fast processing speed -- and each time they comment that "Thanks, everyone says that!".

I find it incredibly funny and frustrating that their card reader is so fast, enough so that others have noticed & commented on it too, while everywhere else -- the local chain grocery stores for instance -- consistently have roughly >=1 minute processing times.

Also frustrating? The cashier has finished ringing my items up. I put my card in, select "No cash back", type in my PIN number, it thinks for a bit ... and then, it asks me if I want to confirm the charges?! No, I don't, I just typed in my PIN for kicks! I get it, it's to verify the amount, but I'd love to know what percent of the time a user [intentionally] selects "No" at that screen -- I probably _accidentally_ select "No" about 5% of the time, and roughly 0% of the time have I ever intended to select "No". Small things, but annoying UX overall.

I'd think that many larger chain retailers are working on this. Some may have it solved w/ more "proprietary" systems; I don't shop at Target much lately, but I recall their payment UX being superior to most, unsure if their chip system is too though.

I'd love to get the speed of swiping back! :-)

Any idea why is the experience this bad?

I'm in Europe and never used swipe cards (haven't seen a cheque since I was a kid, not sure they're even used anymore, but I digress) but the experience is really simple and the times you mentioned are always shorter.

Select goods, put the card in, enter PIN, 10 seconds later I'm walking out of the store. With contactless cards it's getting even simpler and faster and I insist buying at shops that use them. In that case the whole transaction is just one short beep and I'm out. If the total is over ~$20 then I also need to enter the PIN.

It's not that bad in Europe, but it's still bad. With swipe, I can swipe before the clerk has finished scanning my products, and then I can put my card back in my wallet.

With chip, I have to wait after the clerk has scanned all the products and after he pressed the "pay with card" button on his terminal. During the authorization, I have to keep the card plugged into the POS. I do this while I bag my own goods, because in Europe the clerks do not fill up your bags like in the US. At some point during the packaging process, I have to stop to take my card back because I don't like to leave it there while the clerk has started processing the next customer.

The experience sucks profoundly. The convenience at swiping at any time during idle time cannot be understated.

> With swipe, I can swipe before the clerk has finished scanning my products

So you don't have any control over the amount he can enter/withdraw?

You missed the part where you put the card into the chip reader early, and it beeps loudly and everything stops while you read that the card can't go in early, so you take it out and huffily wait until it says enter card now.

Where does the pin come into play for chip based credit card purchases?

Even better are the terminals set up to use the chip for credit transactions but require a swipe for debit (after inserting the card and selecting debit). Truly a WTF moment when that happens.

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.

Yup.

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.

Exactly! He said that with such authority, didn't he? :) Chase just issued me a chip card in the last couple of years, and every time I check out of a store equipped with a terminal that can do both, it's still pretty much a 50/50 chance they'll tell me the chip reader doesn't work yet and I need to swipe.

In my experience most stores are pretty good at this point about having some sort of sign or label if their chip reader isn't working. But I'm sure it's not always the case and there was certainly a lot of confusion a year or so ago when they were first phased in.

Well, now they would do well to put a sign up if the chip reader is working. Because now I by default assume the terminal vendor is lazy and won't implement it until they have a financial incentive to do so.

> until they have a financial incentive to do so.

They have had that for over a year in the States. Weakest point in the chain takes liability.

> 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.

And don't forget paper checks are still circulating. I didn't try last time I was there but I imagine that when you go to cash a paper check you go to a guy sitting by an abacus.

No, most(?) people cash paper checks on their phone. Or rather, using their phone.

Hardly.

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

In the US swiping is fairly common. I might only use my chip once or twice a week. The gas stations all by me, my grocery store, and most of the restaurants near me all still have swipe readers. They are all fairly large chains so this isn't some local one off.

Agreed. I never use cash and contactless is now so pervasive that I actually struggle to remember my PIN when I need to use Chip+PIN.

> Chip cards replaced swiping over a decade ago

No so for the US, they're still relatively new having been introduced in the last 5 years

Only very low value purchases (less than 30 GBP) can be made without a PIN, in the UK at least. That won't cover a decent restaurant meal, refuelling a car or grocery shopping of any significance.

Wow, that took me back. I don't remember seeing anyone swiping their card in recent years, even chipcards are becoming more and more uncommon - contact-less payment leads the way now.

Where do you live?

Outside the United States.

That was easy enough to infer, what wasn't was where in the world contact-less payment systems came to dominate. Even in Europe chip appears to be the norm. China? Japan?

In UK and AU, contactless payments dominate, particularly for low value transactions. I suspect that's the case in Japan too.

China has a mishmash of system from in-app payments (a la WeChat) to QR-code based systems.

Poland. In one of the top5 cities here but nevertheless, even if I'm visiting much smaller ones it's hard to find a place where you cannot pay in a contactless fashion. This PayPass, or whatever is called, technology really took off here in the last 5 years.

Why sadly?

Because it takes five times as long[1] to process in the reader, and adoption for register terminals is spotty.

EDIT: add reference

[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-are-chip-payments-so-slow-in-the-U...

Because swiping is so much more convenient. With a magnetic transaction I can just swipe and put my card away. Most of the time I swipe at the beginning of a long checkout (grocery store). With a chip transaction, I need to leave the card in until the very end. I now need to leave my wallet out, or put the wallet away and then remember to take the card back. More card readers are optimized for swiping with card insertion as an afterthought. Inserting a chipcard is usually at some awkward angle.

As a consumer, chipcard provides no benefit. Yes fraud is theoretically lower, yet the banks aren't passing any of these savings to me (I'm still waiting for lower rates or higher paybacks).

yes, the chips protect banks from fraud. your contract with the credit card already protects you from fraud as long as you report it in a timely fashion.

Why do you want to put your card in at the start? Why not put it in at the end when it's time to pay?

It's faster that way.

He says why. With swiping, you can often do the swipe while the clerk is ringing up your groceries and put your wallet away as opposed to having to do the transaction at the end (as you also need to do if you use your phone).

He's not wrong although this is pretty far down my list of life's annoyances :-)

What happens if you get to the end and you want to dispute the cost and you've already swiped your card? Is it too late?

I imagine they'll void or otherwise adjust the transaction. I've never had an issue. Frankly I'm more likely to notice something while I'm leaving the store if something didn't seem quite right and I start looking over the receipt.

The swipe transaction system doesn't provide a mechanism to authorize a transaction for a specific amount, unlike the chip system. That is - you swipe, and the merchant uses the details on the magstripe to make some arbitrary transaction later on - potentially weeks or months later as I've found out in the very few places in the UK that still run offline transaction systems. With a chip system, you authorize a specific amount and no more within a dedicated machine, and the merchant doesn't get a hold of all the details necessary to make another transaction.

Parellel vs serial

You can actually put your card in at the beginning with certain machines in the UK, and then it picks it up once the cashier starts the payment process. You'll get weird looks if you do. The slot for the card is almost always at the bottom, under the PIN pad. I assume the US uses different machines, since you need to do some awkward signature thing?

This is what a payment terminal looks like in most US chain stores. It would be attached to a mount of some sort on the customer side of a cashier booth:

http://www.ncrcounterpoint.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1...

It has a slot for a chip card at the bottom, a slot to swipe a card on the right, a PIN pad for debit transactions, and may be tap-enabled. The screen portion displays the order total and other instructions, and is also touch-sensitive for providing a signature using the attached stylus.

The ones at regular checkouts in the UK tend to look like this - https://www.primatel.co.uk/image/cache/data/ICT-EFT%20T&S%20...

You can swivel it, tilt it, and even pick it up off of its mount if it's in an awkward position.

This is NOT a consequence of chip card. In India, everything is chip and pin. Our ATM machines just need you to put the card in , chip side facing up and then take it out 2 seconds later (it glows green). Then you can put in your PIN number and move forward.

I think that's because ATMs are trusted devices, and only need a generic signed authorization to do anything. Payment terminals need to have the specific transaction amounts signed by the card, IIRC. At least that's the model I've learned here in my (European) country.

No. ATM need to sign amounts as well,but keep the key in memory. I don't think it's a consequence of swipe vs chip or anything. It just the UX built into the machine.

IMHO , consumers find it reassuring that they are asked for a pin AFTER the amount is entered into a swipe machine in a bar (where you are much more likely to be drunk). This kind of a mechanism is very nice when amount is entered by someone else (the retailer/cashier).

At the ATM, you are the only one that enters the amount.

So the pin entry at the end of the workflow is not a bug..It's a feature.

ATM need to sign amounts as well,but keep the key in memory.

That's not possible with the model used around here. The card's key never leaves the card, all the crypto is performed inside the card's chip itself.

Yes, this! At least in the US, there is zero benefit to me as a consumer from chip cards.

The banks have not increased rewards, or lowered interchange fees (thereby lowering retail prices).

Federal law protects me from fraud no matter the card input method.

Due to the risk of online fraud, I still have to check my statement for fraudulent charges.

There are, however, noticeable downsides. Including everything coin mentioned, here are a few more downsides to chip cards, at least in the US:

* Chip cards are slow in the US. This has gotten better lately, but its still bad. Before the downvotes start, look at the references [1] [2]. This leads noticeably longer lines at stores.

* Not every merchant accepts chip cards. Sometimes its hard to tell which version the merchant accepts.

* There are a lot more annoying noises (the buzz when you leave your card in too long). Its a small nuisance, but it adds up. Previously the transactions were silent.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-are-chip-payments-so-slow-in-the-U...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/chip-card-nightmares-help-is-on...

While federal law protects you from fraud, it's still extremely inconvenient to have your credit card skimmed and then likely automatically cancelled by your bank at an inconvenient time when someone tries to use it, and left without that credit card until the replacement shows up. Chip & Pin solves this particular issue fairly well. This is even more critical for debit cards being skimmed where it's actually a non-trivial process to get your money back.

Not so, the new chip skimmers are even smaller than the mag readers due to the tech.

The swipe is a 1 second job, but the insert+PIN takes maybe 10sec. I do the card+pin at any point while the cashier is registering my groceries. By the time he finished scanning them all, the card has been back in my pocket a long time. The only thing I do at the end is hit "ok" to confirm the amount. The procedure would be exactly the same with a magnetic card.

Even just the convenience of a more reliable read is worth it.

This doesn't work in the US. Where I live, for a credit card chipcard, the cashier has to finish, then there's a 2-way authentication with the server whereby the card has to stay in the reader. This is why the card has to stay out until the very end.

I can see the extra security added by having the card in at the time of confirmation - but it seems a pretty heavy price to pay. This certainly isn't worth 10 seconds extra per customer checkout in a supermarket.

> With a chip transaction, I need to leave the card in until the very end.

Visa announced Quick Chip EMV that enable you to dip your card at any time of the transaction for it to generate and capture a cryptogram before the end of the transaction. This will allow Visa EMV to be almost as fast as swiping.

https://www.visa.com/chip/merchants/grow-your-business/payme...

http://www.pymnts.com/news/emv/2016/visa-puts-the-quick-into...

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

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