They are a big fraud risk. But still, many stores don’t even have the equipment set up for chip cards. How much longer will magstripe continue to be used?
One important factor is what they call “liability shift” which means that after a certain date, the credit card company is no longer liable for fraud if the merchant is not using chip cards. Most of the liability shift has already occurred. The date for it was October of 2015. Most of the remaining liability shift will occur by 2017.
Despite the liability shift, many merchants (especially smaller ones) have not changed to chip cards due to the expense involved. It’s not as simple as just setting up a chip reader. That chip reader then has to be integrated into the store’s point of sale system, and once integrated, it has to be certified with the financial institutions involved.
Debit card processing using chip cards is also a more recent standard and has yet to be fully adopted by financial institutions.
There’s no hard deadline for EMV (chip card) implementation, so it’s impossible to answer your question factually. The best guess right now is that the magnetic stripe is going to continue to be around for quite a few more years.
We have been using chip and pin in the UK for years, but all my cards have a mag stripe as well. This is because it is claimed that people with handicaps, such as the blind wouldn’t be able to cope with PINs. Most tills won’t allow swiping, but you can go to the customer service desk and they will do it.
Hardly any shops accept cheques these days either.
Judging by the transition away from raised numbers for manual carbon imprinting… Never.
Funny you should mention that. I just received a new Discover card a few days ago and it has nothing printed on the front (raised or otherwise) except “DISCOVER”.
It’s not even ‘especially smaller ones’. Look how long it took Target and some of the big retailers. My little store got a chip reader months before it was required. Granted, my old pin pad broke so we figured we might as well get a new one with a chip reader rather than upgrading again in a few months, but also smaller merchants just have one piece of equipment. A place like Target might need to upgrade 20,000 credit card machines and train 100,000 employees. I paid a few hundred dollars, that could run them well into the millions.
Another thing that I ran into in talking with bar owners is that they lost the ability to edit totals with the new upgrade. I noticed that on my machine as well. Once I upgraded, if there was a mistake on a total, the only option was to void (or do a partial refund) then rerun the card. In the past I could just go in and edit the amount.
Bar owners don’t like this (and probably restaurants as well) because when you write your tip on the receipt they can’t go back and change your total. My machine isn’t set to deal with tips, so I’m not sure the ins and outs of it, but in the past a lot of my bar owner friends would, as part of their bar opening or closing routine and enter all the tips. Now they can’t do that. It has to be done right away, while the transaction is still open…Oh, and some of them aren’t real fond of handing a $200 pin pad to a drunken bar patron a 2:15am so they can dip their own card.
Does your acct # NOT appear? How do you do a CNP (Card Not Present - phone or intwrwebz) purchase?
I am about to dip into the world of really tiny business with “The Square”, so I can run cards over my Smart Phone.
There are two options, one for mag stripes (which is free) and one for a chip reader (which is at the moment $40). Will the chip reader card ALSO read the mad stripes, or do I need both until the mag stripes are pretty much gone?
The number is printed in smaller than usual type on the back.
The website shows that you get the magstripe reader along with the chip card reader.
Whose website? I’m seeing them as being available through many different routes.
Sorry, I was looking at the actual company website.
It does both. The chip reader/mag strip one does have to be recharged. It’s not a bad idea to have the mag strip only one as a backup in case the other’s battery dies.
On the other hand, the last time I saw one of those cha-chunk carbon-paper card imprinter devices in action was… last weekend. I suspect there’s still quite a lot of really ancient stuff out there.
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Judging by the transition away from raised numbers for manual carbon imprinting… Never.
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As mentioned above, Discover is leading the pack with their completely smooth cards. Target’s EMV charge cards are also smooth.
The last time I ordered a pizza delivery, the driver did the ultimate manual imprint by holding my card and a charge slip together on the pizza box and scrubbing across the numbers with the side of his pen. Can’t do that with EMV.
Unless some government entity bans raised numbers, I doubt they’ll go away before the US banking industry stops issuing or accepting paper checks.
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… all my cards have a mag stripe as well. This is because it is claimed that people with handicaps, such as the blind wouldn’t be able to cope with PINs.
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:dubious:
That has to be one of the weakest arguments I’ve seen all week. How do the blind dial a phone? Get money from an ATM? Type?
If you can touch-type, you’re not looking at the keyboard, so you may as well be blind, as far as the keyboard is concerned. Same goes for a PIN pad. Feel around for the key with a bump, and you’ve found the 5.
To be fair, most all merchants still have one of those hidden away somewhere. I know we do and the little metal embossing plate with our info on it gets renewed every few years (same info, something somewhere just triggers them to send it to us again). It’s needed in case the power is out or the network is down. ISTM, what would make more sense is to give the terminals a battery that could last a few hours and tell them to approve all transactions (that make sense based on some internal logic, haven’t thought this out yet) when power or comm is down and push them all through later.
Some kinks to work out of that plan, yes, but it’s better than carbon copying them and then later having someone trying to read all that and keying them all in (100’s sometimes) as card not present transactions.
Part of the reason for EMV is exactly that. With EMV, the pizza guy will either have a mobile device he carries or a Square type device from the merchant he can plug into his phone and connect to an app that sends the money back to his employer. Even that way, he should never have access to any of your information.
Don’t forget, as it stands, he can write your number down as soon as he gets back in his car.
Blind people find chip and pin easier to use. There’s raised dots on the 5 key to aide navigation. It’s more difficult for a blind person to sign a slip of paper.
We have been using chip and pin cards in Canada for years. Here is how it works in restaurants. The waiter comes to your table with a hand held machine (about the size of a calculator) that he sets down on your table. You insert your card and he punches in the total. You press the okay button and then you are asked about a tip. You say yes and (in most cases) have to choose between a dollar amount and a percentage. Whichever you choose, you asked to enter the number and okay. The amount is added and the total. You click okay and then are prompted for your pin. You enter it and the machine says to wait. After a short time (it can be as short as a couple seconds), you are prompted to remove your card. Then the machine prints two copies of the receipt. You keep one and the waiter takes the other. At no point does the waiter touch your card or even really see it since it is in the machine. I think the machine also has swipe capability, but then you have to sign the receipt.
The biggest roadblock may be self-service gas pumps. It’s probably expensive to replace them (more than just a scanner), and many service stations are small businesses that can’t afford the cost. I’ve seen most businesses upgrade to chip readers (even if they’re still swiping right now), but I’ve yet to see one at a gas station.