Is this REALLY a chip card or are they lying to me?

[Athena]

My company switched HSA providers this year, and as such, we got new cards. New cards, I might add, that don’t seem to work at my pharmacy. I am not a happy person.

Called the card issuer, they blame the pharmacy. OK, fine. How do I use the @#!#@ thing?

They claim:

1 - this is a chip card.

It does NOT, however, have the chip thing that I see on every other chip card I have. In other words, if you look at this image, my card does NOT have the thing labeled “contact chip” on it. It does, however, have the thing labelled “Contactless logo” on it.

Given that, is this REALLY a chip card? Or are they lying to me?

2 - to get it to work at my pharmacy, try using it as a chip card 3 times, then swiping it. Something magic happens after the third time and it’ll do an override and let me swipe it.

I don’t have many cheap prescriptions coming up to test this with. Does this sound like crap to you all?

In the meantime, I’m ordering checks from this place so I can at least use the funds in my HSA, but I am not a happy camper.

[GaryM]

According to this site:

http://www.mastercard.com/contactless/

All you have to do is hold it to the top of the terminal.

[beowulff]

It’s an “RF” card.
Note that contactless POS terminals are WAY less common than standard “swipe” terminals.

[jtur88]

It is probably a “tap” card, like my bus pass. Hold a very bright light source behind it, and see if you can see a network of wires embedded in it, and a band around it near the edge.

[Northern_Piper]

@beowulff

It’s an “RF” card.
Note that contactless POS terminals are WAY less common than standard “swipe” terminals.

Depends where you are. In my neck of the woods, pretty much all POS terminals are swipe, chip and tap.

[Doughbag]

Chip & Pin card payment is a different payment method to contactless - but both have a chip.

For chip and pin to work, your card needs a chip on the card and a pin (usually send separate by post).

Contactless payment needs an contact less chip, which is different from the chip’n’pin chip.

It usually incorporates a specific account setup and/or a limitation of funds to be transferred, sometimes also a pin is required as well.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

The OP is in the US, where we don’t have chip and PIN. We have chip and sign, which is stupid but there you go.

[gazpacho]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

The OP is in the US, where we don’t have chip and PIN. We have chip and sign, which is stupid but there you go.

The chip makes it much harder to clone cards by having malware in the payment system or skimmers on the payment terminals. The addition of pin just makes it harder to use a stolen card. Stolen card fraud is a drop in the bucket compared to cloning cards.

[Doughbag]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

The OP is in the US, where we don’t have chip and PIN. We have chip and sign, which is stupid but there you go.

Regarding this, its in the US, but from personal experience with tourists here in Ireland, they don’t have it and if they have a chip - they don’t know the pin and/or never used it before.

As a rule, only a few retail shops accept credits cards without chip’n’pin here, unless they are directly related to tourist business.
It’s generally more hassle and carries a higher risk for the retailer by accepting cards by only swiping them.

Then again, are you saying, that you have that same chip and don’t use the pin function? Meaning, you are using the chip instead of swiping , then sign as if you swiped the card?
If so, that’s … well… eh? What? :smack:

[lazybratsche]

@Doughbag

Then again, are you saying, that you have that same chip and don’t use the pin function? Meaning, you are using the chip instead of swiping , then sign as if you swiped the card?
If so, that’s … well… eh? What? :smack:

I’m a little puzzled too, but chip-and-signature prevents the majority of credit card fraud. There isn’t much theft of physical credit cards. In cases of physical theft, I’m guessing that most people cancel stolen cards within hours, or a few days at most.

Rather, criminals will place “skimmers” on public terminals like gas station pumps, and record the magnetic stripe on every swiped credit card. After that it’s trivial to forge credit cards and use them to try to buy valuable merchandise. The chip just makes it far more difficult to forge credit cards.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Doughbag

Then again, are you saying, that you have that same chip and don’t use the pin function? Meaning, you are using the chip instead of swiping , then sign as if you swiped the card?
If so, that’s … well… eh? What? :smack:

Yes. I will bow to lazybratsche and gazpacho as to why we don’t have PINs, though I should note that every card issuer will allow you to create a PIN in order to use the card overseas, etc. (though I was in France and the UK in December 2014 and had no trouble swiping the card anywhere). It’s just that the cardholder cannot “limit” the card to PIN-only use; the merchant has to do it, and US merchants all take signatures instead of PINs.

[Doughbag]

@lazybratsche

I’m a little puzzled too, but chip-and-signature prevents the majority of credit card fraud. There isn’t much theft of physical credit cards. In cases of physical theft, I’m guessing that most people cancel stolen cards within hours, or a few days at most.

Rather, criminals will place “skimmers” on public terminals like gas station pumps, and record the magnetic stripe on every swiped credit card. After that it’s trivial to forge credit cards and use them to try to buy valuable merchandise. The chip just makes it far more difficult to forge credit cards.

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Yes. I will bow to lazybratsche and gazpacho as to why we don’t have PINs, though I should note that every card issuer will allow you to create a PIN in order to use the card overseas, etc. (though I was in France and the UK in December 2014 and had no trouble swiping the card anywhere). It’s just that the cardholder cannot “limit” the card to PIN-only use; the merchant has to do it, and US merchants all take signatures instead of PINs.

As a small retailer in Ireland, I can tell you, that if a purchase is made via chip’n’pin, the risk of fraud is very small for the retailer.
On the other hand, when the card is just swiped and the signed, all the risks are with the retailer.

As the retailer I can choose to not accept a card doing a swipe/sign, however for the typical tourist stuff to the tourists, I usually do.
For a whole laptop, PC, etc… I’m just not willing to take the risk.