Chip payments remain awful. Mag stripe worked much, much better. Much cheaper "terminals". Could use in many more places.
The awfulness of chip payments makes Apple Pay possible.
The awfulness of chip payments makes Apple Pay possible.
in the US, credit card companies continued to accept liability for magstripe transactions up until a couple years ago. i think it was an attempt to hold onto their absurdly high market share in the US - most other countries have higher debit card usage.
Americans always seem to come up with an excuse for why they are slower, like a comment higher in this thread, despite the rest of the world moving on with more convenient and accessible technologies. Is it an overly defensive culture?
Every country is unique, but the financial system in the US is, as far as I can tell, quite unique, in large part due to how large the country is both in physical size and population, combined with a governing system that decentralizes a lot of power (which means some changes are much harder to mandate vs what China can decide to do, for example). You have to understand some of these foundational differences, after which it makes much more sense why some things move much more slowly in the US.
yes, in canada the process to transfer money to somebody is to go to the "e-transfer" section in your bank's app or website, enter the email address to send to and an amount, and hit send. you don't need to know account numbers or anything like that.
Smaller banks and credit unions have zero incentive not to participate in anything the big banks do since it will immediately put them behind 99% of Canadians.
I’m curious what you mean by “worked better”? I haven’t used magstripe for a decade at least but can’t say I’m nostalgic for the experience.