Why do so many credit card chip readers still not work?

[WhyNot]

@clairobscur

Huh? Granted we don’t have the tip part over here, but after you’ve put the amount on your side, the process here is :

1)Enter your card

2)Dial your PIN

3)Hit the green key. The end. Less than 10 seconds, certainly?
What are all these steps for? Is it actually typical of how you use a smart card in the USA, or is something specific to your business? If it’s typical, are there other countries where it’s similarly complicated?

No, that’s a REALLY bad POS system, and I have never run into that many complications.

The biggest hurdle is that I still have to ask, most of the time, “Chip or swipe?” Because so many places still haven’t converted, although in my area it’s getting better. Then, sometimes, I fumble and put the wrong end of the card in. I kinda wish they’d designed them with the chip in the middle, so it didn’t matter. But that’s me being an idiot, not really a system problem. (Maybe it’s a design problem, though.)

It does, as others have mentioned, take longer than a swipe transaction, even when I know it’s a chip and I get the card in correctly the first time. It’s a little annoying in that sense. 20 more seconds of awkward small talk with the cashier and feeling the line grow behind me are not kind to my Social Anxiety disorder.

[Muffin]

Globe and Mail from about a year and a half ago:

So why not simply employ the full chip-and-pin system in the U.S., rather than just the chip? The answer, it seems, is fear of overwhelming the average American consumer, who uses between four and five credit cards.

“Unless everybody’s all in with the pin system at once, the issuer who goes to pin in advance risks their customers not using the card because they can’t remember their pin,” Mr. Robertson says.

Another reason the U.S. card-issuer market has been reluctant to adopt chip-and-pin technology is sheer complexity. While Canada has a handful of banking players and payment networks, the U.S. has more than a dozen payment networks, and roughly 10,000 card-issuing entities of one kind or another. As such, getting all of them on board for chip-and-pin technology – which helps with stolen cards but is less useful in other areas, such as fraudulent online transactions – has been difficult. The chip technology alone appeared to be a workable compromise.

As far as resistance to new tech goes, it is what it is.

RFID faster than swipe. In Canada the limit is usually $100 per transaction.

Per transaction, chip is slower than swipe, but one hell of a lot more secure, so for a few seconds per transaction that exceeds $100, you avoid the embuggerance of having to replace breached cards. For example, since I started using chip, I have not had any security breach here in Canada, but when I occasionally visit the USA (about dozen times a year) and have to use swipe rather than pin much of the time, I get breached every couple of years. I’m a big fan of chip and pin.

[minor7flat5]

I seem to be the only guy in the neighborhood who uses Apple Pay. I use my watch to pay wherever I can and the checkout person is almost always amazed that it works and how simple it is.

I wish Apple Pay would work in more than one out of three stores—the remainder all have the equipment but it isn’t set up right.

When I am at Shoprite, the clerk tells me the total, I double-press the button on the side of my watch, hold it up to the POS terminal, and it beeps. Ten seconds later I am handed a receipt. No hassle.

[VinylTurnip]

@Weisshund

I am seeing a lot of stores that have the chip reader taped off with little paper hand written signs
“No Chip”

I just tell the cashier, sorry no sale then, your system appears defective.

“If you’re going that way, could you restock this Tucks? Yeah, it was that same guy. The one with the cape.”

[Bear_Nenno]

@k9bfriender

I can take applepay or google wallet too, but I have only had 2 clients use that so far, so I don’t know exactly how well it works.

The great thing about Samsung Pay is that it works without NFC. It works fine on the oldest models of mag swipe terminals out there. The newer Samsung models can produce a magnetic transmission that emulates the swiping of a card.

[Joey_P]

@Bear_Nenno

The great thing about Samsung Pay is that it works without NFC. It works fine on the oldest models of mag swipe terminals out there. The newer Samsung models can produce a magnetic transmission that emulates the swiping of a card.

I looove my Samsung phone for just that reason, but it confuses the ever loving fuck out of cashiers. On the one hand, I think it’s funny when I’m waving my phone around their reader and they’re saying ‘sorry it’s not set up yet’ [BEEP]. Now, I know they meant it’s not set up for Chip, but, the look on their face, when my phone made their janky old machine work. OTOH, I feel kinda dumb when I’m trying to say ‘no, I know, but this will work anyways’, then it doesn’t work anyways. I know it doesn’t work at Home Depot or Lowes, and a few other places. It’s a software thing though.
(Also, I’m always waiting for that day when some manager or owner comes out wanting to know what I just did to their machine with my phone.)

@Spiderman

I don’t know who you’re using, but I’d look into another provider if I were you. They sound awful; especially the first sentence in this post - software updates repeatedly break your setup? That’s totally unacceptable.

I’m not sure if you work with merchant services, sometimes that’s just how it is, especially when they’re rolling out new software. When they’re something big coming out, like Chip and Pin, I get the feeling they bring in temps. Spending half the day with a combination of hold music and Tier 1 tech support is just my life sometimes. And, I did (do?) have a software download the crippled one of my machines. They rolled it back to a ‘legacy’ version, but said it might still show up from time to time and I’d have to call and get it redownloded. Fortunately, when I told them that that process took hours and if their software is going to take my machine (and me) down for hours every few weeks, that’s not acceptable, so they sent me a free Clover machine. That’s the one that looks like an iPad (because it’s white, but it actually runs Android software).

The funny thing about that is that about once a week someone won’t want to sign on the screen because ‘it’s dirty/germy’ and they get mad that we don’t have a stylus. All I can think is ‘so, you touched everything in the store, you pushed around a shopping cart for 20 minutes, you wouldn’t think twice about using a pen or stylus that gets touched by thousands of people every week…but the touch screen is too icky? That’s a strange place to draw the line’.
Anyways, @K9, WRT to the request for a Pin coming up. IME, there’s usually a button that says Skip or Credit or Cancel (but sometimes that cancels the entire transaction) or Bypass to get past the Pin screen.

Something that would be nice is if all the software/hardware/cc processors would come up with some kind of standards for the customer/cashier facing I/O screens. when waling through a transaction. Do you push cancel for Credit? What about Skip and Bypass? I go to this store every day, then I go to that store and hit the wrong button and have to start over. I understand that each system will have it’s own bells and whistles and what not, but maybe just some basics that are the same from one terminal to the next.

[pulykamell]

@WhyNot

It does, as others have mentioned, take longer than a swipe transaction, even when I know it’s a chip and I get the card in correctly the first time. It’s a little annoying in that sense. 20 more seconds of awkward small talk with the cashier and feeling the line grow behind me are not kind to my Social Anxiety disorder.

The weird thing is, yes, it’s like 10-20 seconds or so everywhere, except for Walgreens. All the Walgreens I’ve been to have the fastest chip approval system. Like 2-3 seconds. And, so far, they’re the only one I’ve found has that kind of response time. What’s up with that?

[Joey_P]

@pulykamell

The weird thing is, yes, it’s like 10-20 seconds or so everywhere, except for Walgreens. All the Walgreens I’ve been to have the fastest chip approval system. Like 2-3 seconds. And, so far, they’re the only one I’ve found has that kind of response time. What’s up with that?

It’s the software. When we first got ours, it was really slow. Customers would constantly yank their card back out too soon and we’d have to start over, sometimes they’d even do it two or three times, saying things like ‘ugh, how is this protecting my security at all’ and in my straightest face I’d say 'you have to leave it in (while it says ‘leave card inserted’) until it says ‘Please remove card’. A few months later new software was pushed down that sped it up dramatically. Card goes in, a few seconds later card comes back out.

My understanding is that there’s a rolling code type thing going on with the Chip and the bank. In the past, the part of that transaction where both parties decided they were done with that code and picked the next one (or however it worked) happened after you typed your PIN or the cashier confirmed that you signed. I’m sure there where other improvements, but one of them was that all of that now happens at the beginning instead of waiting for any input on the merchant side.
So, that’s the long answer as I understand it (and I could be wrong), the short answer is, software improvements.

[TimeWinder]

@Spiderman

I don’t know who you’re using, but I’d look into another provider if I were you. They sound awful; especially the first sentence in this post - software updates repeatedly break your setup? That’s totally unacceptable.

Yeah. Almost none of what you’re reporting should be happening, nor does it happen at most retailers with working systems. Get a new bank.

[Bear_Nenno]

@Joey_P

I looove my Samsung phone for just that reason, but it confuses the ever loving fuck out of cashiers.

Once the actual terminal was down, so the cashiers were having to swipe the cards through the reader attached to their register monitors. I think you know what I mean; those back up readers connected to the side of the cashier’s screen.

She said, “The terminal is down, I’ll have to swipe it here”. I just reached over and put my phone to the side of her screen. She couldn’t believe what happened.

[Quartz]

@clairobscur

Huh? Granted we don’t have the tip part over here, but after you’ve put the amount on your side, the process here is :

1)Enter your card

2)Dial your PIN

3)Hit the green key. The end. Less than 10 seconds, certainly?

Same here in the UK. The trader enters the amount, then you get the option to add a tip in a restaurant. None of this F1 malarkey. This is typical of chip and pin machines.

Indeed, for small amounts - under £20 - we’ve gone contactless. Just put your card on the reader, wait for the beep, and that’s it.

And they don’t cost anywhere near US$1500. Nor is holding a dog in one hand an impediment: most are designed to be used one-handed, the most common case being a woman carrying a child in one arm.

[JRDelirious]

@Muffin

Globe and Mail from about a year and a half ago:

As far as resistance to new tech goes, it is what it is.

RFID faster than swipe. In Canada the limit is usually $100 per transaction.

Per transaction, chip is slower than swipe, but one hell of a lot more secure, so for a few seconds per transaction that exceeds $100, you avoid the embuggerance of having to replace breached cards. For example, since I started using chip, I have not had any security breach here in Canada, but when I occasionally visit the USA (about dozen times a year) and have to use swipe rather than pin much of the time, I get breached every couple of years. I’m a big fan of chip and pin.

As per the quote, part of the problem is merchants and banks get the feeling that a lot of their consumers will be paranoid about RFID/NFC being easily hacked, yet simultaneously find password/PIN security too much to remember so they’d all use “1234”.

Also per the quote don’t discount the complexity of the US system, where they carry a ton of different “legacy” systems and networks and many clients will flat out refuse to adopt anything that is not backwards-compatible.

Me, if it’s an amount below $50 and no tipping involved I’ll use cash or, if in my home jurisdiction, my bank-branded debit/ATM card which around here is processed as swipe-and-PIN by virtually all merchants.

[Broomstick]

@clairobscur

Huh? Granted we don’t have the tip part over here, but after you’ve put the amount on your side, the process here is :

1)Enter your card

2)Dial your PIN

3)Hit the green key. The end. Less than 10 seconds, certainly?

What are all these steps for? Is it actually typical of how you use a smart card in the USA, or is something specific to your business? If it’s typical, are there other countries where it’s similarly complicated?

It has to partly be the system/machine/software provider for that business.

Where I work we have our chip machines set up and working. In fact, if you have a chip in your card it will not permit a payment via swiping.

Our system isn’t quite so complicated, although we do have a certain number of people trying to use the screen as a touch screen when it’s not.

Here’s what typically happens:

1. The customer, trained by years of habit, swipes the card.
2. The machine says “Chip card detected, insert card”
3. Customer inserts card
4. The machine says “processing”
5. Customer bitches about how this all takes longer now.
6. Machine displays total and asks if that’s OK
7. Customer hits OK (assuming it is - otherwise they cancel the sale)
8. Customer either enters the PIN, or opts for signature sale
9. Machine processes for awhile longer.
10. Customer bitches again about the increased time
11. Machine tells the customer to remove their card.
12. If a signature is required this is when the machine asks for it.
13. End of transaction

However - this can get further complicated because not everyone wants their total purchase on the one card. Sometimes they’re splitting a large purchase between two cards. Or part of the purchase is food stamps or WIC or a gift card (this must be processed first, THEN the customer can use the chip card). Or two people are splitting the bill, so half goes on the first person’s card, half on the second. Sometime people pay part of the total in cash or check (or both!) and then put the balance on the card.

One big flaw - if a mistake is made there’s no way to cancel out of the transaction, as we could with the swipes, and just start over. We just have to stand there until the transaction times out (Cue more bitching about time).

[Musicat]

I like cash better.

[Broomstick]

So do a lot of other people. I do a LOT of cash transactions every day.

[kayaker]

Huh. My business has been accepting chip cards for about a year. IIRC we paid some upfront fees that were rebated back. It takes twice the time for the machine to complete the transaction, but nobody has complained.

You know you have options as far as who you deal with, right? The company I used to use charged me for receipt paper once. I immediately switched companies. The folks I dropped complained that if I’d asked they would have dropped the fee. Sorry, I shouldn’t have to ask.

[Joey_P]

@kayaker

Huh. My business has been accepting chip cards for about a year. IIRC we paid some upfront fees that were rebated back. It takes twice the time for the machine to complete the transaction, but nobody has complained.

You know you have options as far as who you deal with, right? The company I used to use charged me for receipt paper once. I immediately switched companies. The folks I dropped complained that if I’d asked they would have dropped the fee. Sorry, I shouldn’t have to ask.

The company I’m with had free paper. A few months ago they sent out a letter saying that as of the new year they’d start charging for it…I ordered 50 cases. I estimate it last about 7-8 years. Now, that I’m not using that machine very much (since they gave me a Clover terminal), it’ll probably last me twice that long.

Also, about 5 years ago they did charge me for paper once. I called them up, they told me since they acquired my account from the other processor blah blah blah. I said ‘well that’s all well and good, the contract I have says that paper is free, can you fax me a copy of the contract I signed with you’ and she said she’d change it back to free paper, and gave me a direct number back to her if it got changed again.
In general, I don’t put up with that, but I hate changing processors. It’s so much work. I almost did it during the trainwreck of changing over to Chips when they crippled one of my machines but even then I didn’t. Sales people get annoyed when I won’t switch to them when they can save me a hundred bucks a year (I usually tell them need to save me at least that much per month). It’s just that much work on my end to make sure it happens smoothly and retrain everyone.

[k9bfriender]

@TimeWinder

Yeah. Almost none of what you’re reporting should be happening, nor does it happen at most retailers with working systems. Get a new bank.

I’m a bit smaller than most retailers, and I am not a retailer, I provide a service, that has tips, so that’s caused quite a bit of confusion.

These guys were great for me when I first set up, and they were pretty good for most things, it’s just this chip thing has everybody screwed up. I’ve spoken to peers that use other servicers, and they had just as much difficulty.

The last thing I want to do, after finally getting everything working the way it should be (and having a couple people on speed dial to fix anything that goes wrong), is to switch and start all over with someone else.

In any case, the point was not to hijack the thread with tales of woe, but to explain that it is quite likely that many retailers don’t have the chip and pin system working not because of the retailer, but because the whole system is a mess, and it is really something the merchant services, credit card issuers, and banks need to work out.

[pulykamell]

@Joey_P

It’s the software. When we first got ours, it was really slow. Customers would constantly yank their card back out too soon and we’d have to start over, sometimes they’d even do it two or three times, saying things like ‘ugh, how is this protecting my security at all’ and in my straightest face I’d say 'you have to leave it in (while it says ‘leave card inserted’) until it says ‘Please remove card’. A few months later new software was pushed down that sped it up dramatically. Card goes in, a few seconds later card comes back out.

My understanding is that there’s a rolling code type thing going on with the Chip and the bank. In the past, the part of that transaction where both parties decided they were done with that code and picked the next one (or however it worked) happened after you typed your PIN or the cashier confirmed that you signed. I’m sure there where other improvements, but one of them was that all of that now happens at the beginning instead of waiting for any input on the merchant side.
So, that’s the long answer as I understand it (and I could be wrong), the short answer is, software improvements.

Yeah, I figured it’s either the software or the connection. But the thing is, it’s been that way since Day 1 of the chip card readers at Walgreens, and I haven’t noticed anyone else catching up. I guess Walgreens must have had efficient software to begin with or something.

[Melbourne]

“Some retailers have already taken steps to reduce transaction times. Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, shaved 11 seconds off its processing time by removing a prompt for customers to confirm a purchase amount, among other steps, according to a spokesman”