And Step 13 is a specific add-on to the software used in Canada. 
Until April last year I worked for a Large Bank’s merchant card services division. We had clients in Canada and yeah, it was about 2006 when chips arrived in Canada and about a year later when CnP became mandatory. We talked with the merchants, not the consumers, and I remember only a few complaints about the longer time a transaction took.
Much more often during the transition period were the merchants who had switched ahead of the crowd complaining about the PIN part of the transaction. A lot of their customers (especially the older ones) would not know their PIN and the way the software was set, if you had chip-capable equipment, you had to use it as CnP when a chip card was presented. “But the guy down the street didn’t need a PIN,” was a constant grumble they got. The guy down the street hasn’t upgraded yet.
The story we were told was that chip cards were implemented in Europe much earlier than on this continent (even including Canada) because 1) Credit fraud was more rampant there and 2) most European countries have only a couple banks (or even one) instead of the dozens we have here all of which have to be persuaded.
As was mentioned in this thread, the deadline set by the credit card associations for CnP was October 2015. We were working with our favorite terminal manufacturer but undisclosed issues cropped up and after announcing that if they met certain criteria, we (not the retailers) would still be liable with the new deadline being set for December, then February, then May. I retired before the shift was implemented. Probably about 80% of our small retailers had already obtained a chip-capable terminal so the change would involve only a software update, via TCP/IP or phone line.
Well, yeh, we do. Our major banks tend to have conservative/responsible organizational behaviour, and usually play well in the sandbox together, so working with them is usually OK (with the standard disclaimer that all banks are evil, etc. etc. etc.). One of the niftier things they did a few years ago was set up a not-for-profit company called Interac to help people handle their money easily: ABM withdrawals from almost every ABM in the country (the equivalent of having something like Plus and Cirrus combined for debit cards in addition to credit cards), electronic funds transfers using email, and on-line payments for goods and services.
It’s made life easier and less expensive for me. Want to pay me by debit or credit card? Interac e-transfer, and I don’t get dinged with the vendor’s % credit card transaction fee. Want money from me? Interac chip and pin, Interac swipe and pin if the chip reader is buggered, Interac RFID for small purchases, or Interac e-transfer via the internet, with enough transactions coming with my bank accounts that I usually don’t have to worry about transaction fees. When added to the usual bank account stuff (integrated business, personal and credit card accounts, on-line banking, 24 hour telephone banking, and some Q Branch stuff such as voice biometrics rather than passwords with telephone banking – love it! – and cheque deposit by cell phone photo – only tried it once and it worked nicely), it makes routine transactions and account management easy, rather than the embuggerance that it used to be.
It’s really nice that in a world in which the simplest things are all to frequently made too complicated, my banking has been simplified greatly since the days of passbooks, and is not limited by either time of day or by location in Canada. So yeh, we have a first world banking system. 
(I hope this post hasn’t violated anySDMB rules. Please don’t ban me for saying something nice about the service side of Canadian banks.)
Come to think of it, I recall my dad being one of the guinea pigs using an ATM (or whatever it was called at the time) forty-five years ago in Cooksville, ON. It was a pet project of the Royal Bank of Canada’s Rollie Frazee, who was a close childhood friend of my mom. In high school, she was the bank’s bag-man, picking up the day’s deposits from the retailers on the main street of St. Stephen, NB, and since he would frequently tag along with her, he was hired to be her security guard. One day the bank manager got it in his head to equip Rollie with a handgun, and boys being boys, he pulled it out and showed my mom his gun while she was walking along with the bag of cash. A bystander saw my mother “being held up” and called the police, who arrived with sirens wailing. Fortunately, Rollie was not sacked, and instead worked up from after-school security guard/bank robber to being the longest serving chairman of the board of the RBC.
Heh. Back in the early eighties when ATMs were just getting off of the ground, one Sunday my girlfriend and I were going up to San Francisco. She had only about ten bucks on her and was fretting about it but when we passed by her bank there was this brand-new ATM machine embedded in the front wall – it still had concrete dust on the sidewalk from where the wall had been cut through. We wheel in and she gets out to work the machine. Insert card. Bip, bip, bip – $40 please. The machine responds by spitting out two pieces of play money with Wasn’t that easy? Now go inside and ask to be issued a real ATM card. printed on it.
I still remember the look on her face. “I hope that didn’t hit my account for real!” She inquired on Monday; it wasn’t.
I first saw the Chip readers on a trip to Ireland in 2006, but my Visa card was still just a stripe. Got home from the trip and about two weeks later, my new Chip card came in the mail. Just a coincidence.
Yes, I assume that one reason it’s been easier to implement in Canada is that unlike in the US, banks are under federal jurisdiction, and our federal government’s banking policy is to encourage large chartered banks rather than a lot of small banks. There’s the Big Five who dominate the market (TD, Royal Bank, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal and CIBC). Once they were onside, I imagine the rest of the banks and credit unions fell into line.
I’m curious: why do N American systems need steps 2) and 9)? In the UK - and AFAIK the rest of Europe - the system sorts this out for itself. I can insert either a debit or credit card and it doesn’t care nor what account the debit card is attached to. With these extra steps I’m not surprised the transaction takes a while.
From what I’ve seen, it’s because the card swipe/entry devices that the customer uses is somehow not connected/integrated with the clerk’s register. That’s stupid, and I don’t know why they did it that way. The system seems very patched together in the USA.
Related and/or tangential but upthread someone said that this CnP movement in the USA moves the responsibility for fraud prevention to the retailer. I have an online shop and just yesterday my system flagged an order as being high risk (possibly fraudulent). When this happens, I’m supposed to contact the shopper and inquire. What they don’t tell me is… inquire what exactly. “Hey, is this really your card or did you steal it?” And for an online shop, how do they expect me to have the customer prove it? Fax images of both their card and ID to me? Yeah… no.
I bought £50’s worth of groceries yesterday. I scanned it as I walked round the store which is good because, a, I can keep a running total, and b, I can sort stuff straight into the bags I bought with me.
At the checkout I scan a barcode on the machine, put it in the holder provided and wait while it tots up my purchases. 30 seconds
At the end it beeps and I have to wait a moment while the assistant tells it that - yes I do look old enough to buy wine. 30 seconds.
I insert my Amex card, key the PIN and once it has done its stuff, it tells me to remove the card, take my detailed receipt and thanks me for my business. Another 30 seconds.
Less than two minutes after entering the self-checkout area I was heading for my car.
Before I did the shopping, I went to the coffee shop and just waved my card (Not Amex this time - they don’t accept them) over the reader to pay an arm and a led for a cup of brown sludge.
They ask ‘debit or credit’ because they [the cashier] doesn’t know how you want to use your card. The card holder may want to use one way or the other for a variety of reason and the credit card machine can’t guess. Some, however, will automatically either assume debit unless you force credit or decide which is cheaper for the merchant and go that route unless the customer overrides is.
As for Step 9, Cheque Or Savings, I’ve never seen that, I assume it’s something outside the US only.
@JcWoman, what was the message you got back? If I took an online order (and part of my business is done online) and got some kind of error, I’d contact the seller let them know there was a problem and go from there. Two things to keep in mind is that after getting a code from the processor alerting you to a problem, if there is indeed a problem, you may not have a leg to stand on if it does turn out to be fraudulent and two, chargebacks, even if you ‘win’ still carry an unrefundable charge to you, so it’s good to avoid them.
I had one that gave me odd code a while back, I called the buyer a few times and got no answer and they didn’t return my message. I emailed them and they didn’t return my email, so I figured I would just wait it out, assuming eventually they’d call me either about all the messages or about not getting their shipment…never heard back. I can only assume it was a stolen card.
In the USA debit cards can be processed through two different systems. If I use a debit card, the system won’t know how I want to use it. “Debit” uses the ATM system and requires a PIN (and some banks charge a fee exactly as if the cash register was an out-of-network ATM). “Credit” uses the processing system of a credit card company (almost always Visa or Mastercard) and will require a signature (or not, for small purchases). Both options come from the same money in the same account, but the charge gets there differently.
I don’t think we have step 9 down here, though. You can access a savings account at an ATM, but not, AFAIK, from a point of sale device. Canada might have fewer restrictions on withdrawals from savings accounts, though.
You’re not suggesting that Weisshund is Cory Doctorow, are you?
Possibly inquire if they entered the card information correctly, or if they have a different method of payment they’d like to use.
I don’t know if you’re using an idiosyncratic online payment system, but when I make an online transaction, the system tells ME if there’s a problem before letting me go on my merry way.
That’s, in almost all cases, programming on the part of the site owner/shopping cart. You plug in your credit card, the website*, it sends it to the processor and gets some kind of code back, then the website does something with that code. It could very well be that Jc’s site is set in such a way that it’s either approved and the sale goes through or it’s not approved and it sends an email to a site admin. In this case she got a code that she hadn’t seen before or wasn’t sure what to do with.
*Also, many websites, especially ones that are bases on small mom and pop brick and mortar stores just hand off the credit card into to someone at the store and that person manually keys it into the terminal and goes from there.
Let me clarify: the risky order went through just fine. I took a look at the payment details and metadata and it all looked fine to me. The shopper entered the full billing address, shipping address, card number and even the CCV. My system flagged it as a possible fraud because the billing address and shipping address were in different countries (neither in the US or Canada) and that seems to follow the traits of fraud that credit card companies often see.
It seems that my system uses the same kinds of algorithms that our credit card companies do when they track your usage and call you when they see a transaction that’s out of your normal. It might be a perfectly acceptable transaction, and it seems to be on me to evaluate that. But I don’t see how an online retailer can do that.
There is no North American system. The Canadian system is different from the US system, probably because of the differences between the banking systems in the two countries. From the comments in this thread from the Canadian and US posters, the Canadian system sounds quicker.
With respect to the two questions: I don’t know why I have to say “Debit or credit”, but I suspect it’s because our debit cards in Canada are not linked to our credit cards, the way they seem to be in the US. Although they’re both issued by my bank, my understanding is that the Visa and MasterCard syndicates are séparate corporations from the banks themselves. So maybe they have a completely different initial sequence that the cashier has to enter?
As for “Chequeing or Savings”, it’s to give me a choice. I can withdraw from either my chequing account or my savings account with the same card. Gives me greater flexibility. No way the card reader will know which I want to use.
But if I use the “tap” function, I don’t get that choice, because the whole idea of “tap”'is “tap and go” without any waiting. So my default with “tap” is that it comes out of my chequing account.
That’s not how it is in Canada: the register and the card reader are fully integrated. When I hold up my card, the cashier pushes buttons on the till to start the process. Then the prompts show up in the card reader, as I mentioned earlier, and I answer the prompts. The cashier never touches the card readers, which are usually mounted in a stand for the purchaser to use. The cashier normally can’t even touch the card reader keyboard.
Good thinking and 100% right as far as it goes. But US system is even more complicated than that.
We have pure debit cards, pure credit cards, and cards that can do either. They all look the same and have the same type of numbers. Only by asking either the user or the issuer’s computer can the retailer know what kind of card is presented. And for the dual-use cards, only the user knows which option they want to use for this transaction. Some merchants will process a dual-use card only one way or the other, so even the user can’t necessarily control which way the transaction goes.
Between the card holder, the card holder’s bank / issuer, the Visa / Mastercard / Amex cartels (or the literally dozens of interbank debit-only cartels), the merchant’s bank, the merchant’s payment processor, and the merchant, there are at least six entities in each transaction chain. Each of which has different incentives leaning in different directions.
Again, this is different in Canada: they’re asking if my card is a debit card or a credit card. The two options aren’t on the same card. But why the reader can’t just tell from the card which it is, I don’t know.
So “credit” doesn’t need a PIN, just a signature, even though it’s a chip card? Also, how does it come out of the same account? If it’s a credit charge, doesn’t it go on your Visa?MC monthly bill, not a bank account?
No. You only use a PIN if you push the debit button. And you also use the pin if you use the magnetic stripe and push the debit button.
It’s not a credit charge. It’s a debit charge that uses the credit card company to process the charge rather than going directly to the bank. My bank debit card has a Mastercard logo on it, and I can use it as if it was a Mastercard credit card, but it is still a debit card. There is no line of credit or monthly bill.
Way back whenever, credit cards were accepted much more widely than debit cards, so the banks partnered with credit card companies to let the debit cards piggyback on the credit card processing systems.