This question applies to the US only. Do they still provide people with credit cards that you have to swipe (i.e. don’t have chips)?
I recently signed up for Square credit card processing for my non-profit and it comes with 2 options you can use to take a credit card. A card reader for cards with chips, and a swiper for cards without chips. I was just wondering how often I will have the use the swiper versus the chip reader. I can’t remember the last time I had a credit card without a chip in it.
I have never seen a chipped credit card in the US that didn’t also have a magnetic stripe.
The reader for the stripe is MUCH simpler, just a tape head connected to the phone’s mic input. Though the hardware needed for the chip can’t cost much these days either.
You might look into if there is a difference in fees depending on data source. If the chips lower the fraud rate, the fee might be lower for a chip read vs. swipe.
Good point Kevbo, I didn’t mean to imply that cards couldn’t have both options, but I haven’t been to a store in years that didn’t have a chip reader so I never swipe my cards these days.
I was just wondering if there were companies providing cards today that DIDN’T have a chip and were swipe only. My gut tells me that I really don’t need the swiper, but there may still be some old credit cards out there that were made before they starting using chips.
Yeah, you’d need to know not only whether anyone was still handing out swipe-only cards, but also whether there were any older swipe-only cards still unexpired and valid.
I recently used a local tech guy for a repair to my computer. When I paid him, he used PayPal over his phone; he had a keypad for me to enter my PIN. I asked him why he used them and he said that the rental for a card reading machine was a lot more than the cost of transactions via PayPal; especially for a business like his with only a few dozen payments a month.
I find that almost everybody that uses those Square readers (the little actually square ones that fit on on a mobile device) swipes it, even for cards with chips. I suspect it must either just be faster, or they predate the chip readers.
The in-place readers around here (relatively poor rural area) have an astonishingly high rate of chip-read errors. I’d bet I at mom-and-pop type places the chip read fails and I have to swipe maybe a quarter of the time (and across multiple different cards, so it’s the reader and not the card). This basically never happens at upscale locations.
Square readers are cheap; they pretty much give them away. Square also charges a lower rate than most credit cards. They’re perfect if you don’t have many credit card transactions. I have one and have only used it 3-4 times, but it was very convenient then.
I think most every credit card has a chip these days. All of my unchipped cards sent out replacements that included a chip last year.
It’s a liability shift in who ‘owns’ any fraud. If a merchant requires customers to use chip & it’s later found out to be a fraudulent txn then Visa/MC eat the fraud; however, if the merchant allows the customer to use the mag stripe & it’s later found out to be fraudulent then the merchant eats the cost. Therefore the merchant is incentivized to have customers use the chip.
I have a square account that I use very occasionally & the nature of what I’m getting money for & whom I’m getting it from I don’t worry about fraud so the cost to pay for the chip reader wasn’t worth it to me. Actually since TPTB decided we don’t need 3.5mm headphone jacks in our phones anymore I can’t even use my swipe reader. I use the slightly more expensive card-not-present option & type all of the info in.
I get a few at my store without chips, but they tend to be debit cards for small local banks/credit unions. The numbers aren’t even embossed on some of those cards. They almost feel like store gift cards.
I don’t know how the square reader works, but if it comes with an app/website that lets you manually key in cards, you could get the chip reader and use that when you get a card without a chip. If you run into too many problems get the other one (or both, if that’s an option).
I’ve found the opposite phenomenon: that although all my credit cards are now chip + stripe, and many of them use contactless, many MERCHANTS still have swipe-only terminals. This is especially true for smaller businesses (independent grocers, artisans and restaurants at farmers’ markets, random old bakeries or coffee shops), but also sometimes in random Target stores and the such. A lot of times they’ll even have the chip + contactless readers installed on their POS systems but not set up to take anything except swipes, so they’ll just tape over the chip slot and leave a little post-it saying “please swipe”. Mind you, this is 2019, about two decades after the rest of the world adopted chip + PIN. The US is just super slow with stuff like this.
I’d think not taking chip/contactless/NFC would be more prominent with the bigger places. As a small business, we didn’t have a whole lot of choice. We got all kinds of warnings about having to migrate to chip due to the shift of liability stuff and we were all but forced to upgrade out equipment (or at least the software on existing equipment). In fact, if a business got started in the last 5-10 years, the processing terminals they received and the software on them would have all that enabled by default. And, as someone who deals with processing companies more often than I’d like to, getting them to rollback software (and sometimes even just changing certain settings) can mean several hours on the phone with them.
A big business, OTOH, has a lot more clout(?) with the processors. If I request my processor remove the chip option from my machines, they’ll tell me to pound sand. If Target does it, the processor is going to have to consider losing 1800 stores. Let’s call that 18,000+ terminals and lets say a billion dollars in card present credit card transactions, of which the processors keep, I’d wager $10m or so.
Maybe it’s the mid-sized businesses that get hit the hardest? By “small”, I mean companies that are usually one or two people big, with their old iPhones and the $10 Square swipers. I still see a lot of them around, several a week in fact. And my local food co-op in Chicago doesn’t take anything but swipes either, even they opened just two years ago.
And do the bigger businesses really have that much sway over the processing? I thought the liability shift was coming straight from Visa and Mastercard; do the intermediary banks even have any say about it?
My big nationwide chain bank’s Visa cards have both chip and strip. It’s been that way for maybe 5+ years now.
My small town North Carolina credit union’s Visa card only has the strip, and it was recently issued.
My limited experience (words that make you say “bullshit”) is that mag strip cards work much more often than chip cards. That is, I see signs that warn me that the chip reader is not working.
I’ve not had to do a contactless phone transaction, because I’m an old guy, and will still offer cash if fantastic plastic does not work. But I say that mag stripe may not be new, but it’s bombproof. YMMV.
I fucking hate the chips because they take forever to process, and if you accidentally put it in or take it out too early, they have to cancel the entire transaction and start again. Even when it works right, it still takes forever. Ugh. I’m also not really sure what their point is, since without the PINs like the rest of the world use, the chip just spits out all your info to any card reader anyway. How is that any more secure than the magstripes? Crazy system. Even when they’re working as intended, they’re still quite vulnerable anyway. Security theater, I suppose.
Magstripes are nice until they start wearing out (they always do, eventually). No safety whatsoever, but the credit card issuers aren’t at any risk of bankruptcy from fraud anyway.
Meanwhile, the contactless payments are a GODSEND. You don’t need a phone for them; a lot of newer cards have contactless built in. Just tap and go, whether you’re at the grocery store or getting a coffee or jumping on transit. It’s SUPER fast, way faster than either magstripe or chip… usually takes the machine about 1 second to process it vs the 10-15 or so for the stupid chips. Also saves you from having to dig out the card from your wallet.
A couple of months ago, I was in a trucker bar with my sister and brother-in-law, buying them a meal, and the bar had NO terminal. The server had to manually phone in the credit card transaction and write out a receipt, which I filled in with tip and signature. The phone call approved the transaction, and gave the server a transaction number, which she wrote down on the receipt.
I was quite surprised. I had thought that pretty much everyone had gone to chip and contactless terminals in Canada.
I asked the server whether the bar had one of those “chunk chunk” imprinter machines. They did, but they weren’t using it for some reason.
Lots of people are genuinely concerned about the welfare of the bank’s money, and will inconvenience themselves because they think they’re protecting it. Think of all the people who write “see ID” on their credit cards, for no demonstrable benefit whatsoever. (Even if it works, it only protects against your card being used by someone who steals the physical card. But since someone has the card, you still have to go through all the hassle of a replacement whether it’s used or not.)
When I use the chip, it’s usually so fast that the transaction is complete before I get my card back in my wallet. Not slow at all. I usually use the tap though, if the terminal supports it.
Even when they’re working as intended, they’re still