Mastercard To Become First Payments Network To Phase Out Magnetic Stripe (mastercard.com) 125
Mastercard, writing in a blog post: In the early age of modern credit cards, they had to write down account information for each card-carrying customer by hand. Later, they used flatbed imprinting machines to record the card information on carbon paper packets, the sound of the swiping of the handle earning them the name, zip-zap machines. (They were also dubbed "knuckle-busters" by the unfortunate clerks who skinned their fingers on the embossing plate.) And how could clerks tell whether the customer was good for the purchase? They couldn't. Credit card companies would circulate a list of bad account numbers each month, and the merchant would have to compare the customers' cards against the list.
The arrival of the magnetic stripe changed all that. An early 1960s innovation largely credited to IBM, the magnetic stripe allowed banks to encode card information onto magnetic tape laminated to the back. It paved the way for electronic payment terminals and chip cards, offering more security and real-time authorization while making it easier for businesses of all sizes to accept cards. That thin stripe has remained a fixture on billions of payment cards for decades, even as technology has evolved. But now the magnetic stripe is reaching its expiration date with Mastercard becoming the first payments network to phase it out.
The shift away from the magnetic stripe points to both consumers changing habits for payments and the development of newer technologies. Today's chip cards are powered by microprocessors that are much more capable and secure, and many are also embedded with tiny antennae that enable contactless transactions. Biometric cards, which combine fingerprints with chips to verify a cardholder's identity, offer another layer of security. Based on the decline in payments powered by magnetic stripes after chip-based payments took hold, newly-issued Mastercard credit and debit cards will not be required to have a stripe starting in 2024 in most markets. By 2033, no Mastercard credit and debit cards will have magnetic stripes, which leaves a long runway for the remaining partners who still rely on the technology to phase in chip card processing.
The arrival of the magnetic stripe changed all that. An early 1960s innovation largely credited to IBM, the magnetic stripe allowed banks to encode card information onto magnetic tape laminated to the back. It paved the way for electronic payment terminals and chip cards, offering more security and real-time authorization while making it easier for businesses of all sizes to accept cards. That thin stripe has remained a fixture on billions of payment cards for decades, even as technology has evolved. But now the magnetic stripe is reaching its expiration date with Mastercard becoming the first payments network to phase it out.
The shift away from the magnetic stripe points to both consumers changing habits for payments and the development of newer technologies. Today's chip cards are powered by microprocessors that are much more capable and secure, and many are also embedded with tiny antennae that enable contactless transactions. Biometric cards, which combine fingerprints with chips to verify a cardholder's identity, offer another layer of security. Based on the decline in payments powered by magnetic stripes after chip-based payments took hold, newly-issued Mastercard credit and debit cards will not be required to have a stripe starting in 2024 in most markets. By 2033, no Mastercard credit and debit cards will have magnetic stripes, which leaves a long runway for the remaining partners who still rely on the technology to phase in chip card processing.
That will do away with the backup (Score:3)
Given how much trouble we have with chip readers failing, it's very useful to have the mag strip as a backup. That way, we can still process the transaction, albeit at more risk to ourselves. For stores that don't get a lot of chargebacks, it's an acceptable risk.
Without the mag strip, customers with damaged chips (and they're easy to damage) will be unhappy. As will merchants with terminals that get dirty (you can't clean them), or get damaged by moron customer who jam the card is so hard they break things, or that didn't by the "wrong phase of the moon" support plan.
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I drove halfway across the country recently, and the chip failed at about half of the gas station pumps. If it wasn't for the mag stripe, I would have had a real hassle having to hit up cash stations (and pay fees) along the way.
Re: That will do away with the backup (Score:5, Interesting)
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And not all gas pumps are chip readers. Plenty of stripe only readers.
Are we talking Bumfucknowheristan or a western country here?
No I ask that legitimately. I have not seen a card reader (anywhere, not in the west, not in the east, not at a petrol station) since the late 90s which didn't have a chip reader.
Please don't pander to the lowest common denominator. At some point they should pull their finger out.
My barber uses square and thats all stripe reading.
Square is very popular here. I was about to call bullshit on this since I've never seen it as a magstripe reader but sure enough I googled it and such a thing does exist.
Re: That will do away with the backup (Score:2)
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The Kroger chain grocery store where I usually get gas switched to chip readers a couple of years ago. I assume the rest of them are doing the same.
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90s??? Chips are only 5-7yrs in existence at all in the USA.
He specifically excluded Bumfucknowheristan.
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Exactly, the US has been very behind in this regard. At least in Europe, chip-only transactions have been the norm since the early 2000s. Or in cases like France with Carte Bleue, chips have been standard since the early-mid 90s. I remember trying to use a mag stripe-only card in France several years ago, and the young cashier looked at me like I was an alien... she had no idea what to do with the thing!
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It sounds like he does concealed carry on an everyday basis but left it locked in there instead of taking it on the cruise
Re:That will do away with the backup (Score:5, Insightful)
If it only failed at half of them, it probably wasn't the chip so much as poorly maintained terminals. That will largely disappear if stores start losing most of their business because of it.
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Here in the UK we've had chip+PIN since 2006, and contactless NFC for a few years. Magstrip was all but gone by 2008. Contactless was already common in larger businesses but became even more common during the pandemic. I'd estimate 80% of businesses now support contactless (up to the limit of £45), with the remaining 19% just supporting chip+PIN, and cash only for the 1% that don't want to pay transaction fees (Chinese restaurants, dodgy pubs, etc.)
In the 14 or so years I've had a chip card, I've neve
Re:That will do away with the backup (Score:5, Interesting)
Your concerns are either fear of change or incompetent implementation.
I'm old enough to have used embossing machines, then mag swipe, then chip, then NFC card and now NFC phone.
Australia was an early adopter of chip cards over 20 years ago.
https://www.finextra.com/newsa... [finextra.com]
and NFC payments 10 years ago. I have not used mag swipe for banking for over 10 years.
Magswipe was so unreliable and chip was at least an order of magnitude more reliable and NFC even more reliable.
In banking convenience, USA is way behind EU/Oceania.
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All the cards I have been issued in the US have been chip and signature, not chip and pin.
Transactions under $50 don't need a signature. Not once has a cashier physically taken my card to look at the signature.
It feels just as insecure as a mag-stripe.
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I'm waiting for the security breach where everyone dumb enough to use NFC on phones gets fucked when the info gets grabbed. I have no idea why anyone would put their bank information on a phone that can directly access your money than use a card with a chip and PIN that can't be accessed on the net but is just as convenient.
Considering that NFC gives out your card number, expiry date and name (all the information on the front of the card... and required to make a purchase online) in encryption so weak it is almost clear text... I think a lot of criminals are collecting information just by hanging around a busy area with a NFC reader. Considering max range is determined largely by the transceiver (not the card, terminals have a tiny range because the transceiver in the terminal is low powered) it could easily be done at a metre
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Australia being in the Asia Pacific probably picks up Japanese tech faster than the US.
Australia is not special. It is the US banking system that is archaic. I hear that payment by check was still common well into the 21st century. I guess it is like Metric or eliminating pennies - the US is just extremely resistant to change in some ways, but leads the world in others. An odd place.
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Chill out man, you sound seriously stressed.
My point is, chip and NFC has never been a problem in Australia. No one complains about it, it's incredibly reliable to the point being I can't remember the last time I or my family or friends had an issue, so its likely an implementation issue.
Most of the world has moved to NFC, so I'm not sure why the USA would even want to do chip reading. NFC only $100
IMHO, the USA has a crazy complex banking system, and most of the problems I've had when visiting, is banks b
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I don't know what other countries are like, but here in the UK the catds** always do NFC without pin and nearly always do chip with pin*. They then place limits on NFC transactions to limit the losses when a card is stolen. So you can make most of your transactions with NFC, but from time to time you will have to insert your card and type the pin either because the transaction value is high or because the cumulative value of transactions since your last C+P transaction is high.
I noticed major reliability is
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I know how reliable they are. And I know how much more easily damaged they are. And I know that there are no tricks to get one that's acting up to work a little longer while the replacement is on the way, like you could with the mag strip readers.
WTF are you doing to your customer's cards you ham fisted monster? I worked many years in retail too, and I can tell you with certainty you are either talking out of your arse, or are incredibly reckless.
And I know that there are no tricks to get one that's acting up to work a little longer
Tampering with the magstripe is illegal in many jurisdictions. Your trick can get you into a lot of trouble. Incidentally I had a NFC fail on me one day. I had a new card within 24 hours. If this is some calamity for you I highly recommend getting a full time carer.
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Note: The US will not see this change until closer to 2033.... but there are many markets around the world that have been using Chip+Pin for a long time... very successfully.
Even traveling around rural northern England I was able to use a chip and pin to pay at restaurants, etc (many of them _require_ it).
The US is slow and behind.
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Note: The US will not see this change until closer to 2033.... but there are many markets around the world that have been using Chip+Pin for a long time... very successfully.
Even traveling around rural northern England I was able to use a chip and pin to pay at restaurants, etc (many of them _require_ it).
In Iceland, it's nearly impossible to buy fuel for a vehicle without a card that has a PIN, and very few US credit cards have PINs. Bit of a pain.
The US is slow and behind.
It is, and will continue to be for mostly bad reasons. Knowing that won't make this any less painful.
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Every replacement card I've gotten in the US since 2015 or so has had a chip except for maybe prepaid Visa gift cards.
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They all have chips these days, but credit cards don't generally have a PIN (unless you ask for it, and not all banks will).
Fuel in Iceland is always pay at the pump, and they won't take cards (credit or debit) that don't have a PIN. The only solution is to go into the counter and buy a gas card for that brand of station (which, interestingly, is mag strip only, presumably because chip cards are too expensive for something that's disposable and can't be reloaded).
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AIUI there are at least four possible "chip" transaction types, chip only, offline chip and pin (card verifies the pin), online chip and pin (bank servers verify the pin) and chip and signature. Some cards and some terminals only support a subset.
The US has mostly gone for chip and signature as the default, Europe has mostly gone for chip and pin as the default (not sure if it's online or offline). I have heard (I can't confirm because I'm not an american) that with some banks even if you have a pin it onl
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I live in the US and it's easily a majority of merchants that have at least a chip reader, if not NFC. I may have handed my card to the cashier to swipe sometimes in the past few years, but the last time I swiped it myself is right before my gas station switched to chip readers.
Something you can learn from Canada (Score:2)
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"or get damaged by moron customer who jam the card "
Where I live most people uses contact-less RFID credit and debit cards, since the pandemic, almost everybody since you don't even have to enter a pin-code under 50€, so no touching.
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"or get damaged by moron customer who jam the card "
Where I live most people uses contact-less RFID credit and debit cards, since the pandemic, almost everybody since you don't even have to enter a pin-code under 50€, so no touching.
It must be nice to live in paradise, where only smart people live. Sadly, I do not live there, and we see a fair number of very, very stupid people who are, basically, incapable of functioning as an adult. In terms of overall numbers, they are few, but it only takes one to break the terminal and annoy everyone behind them for the next day or two.
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True, but the magnetic stripes are a lot easier to damage and fail more often.
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The chip is the backup. Primary usage of a card contactless payment. Recently I see more and more people importing their cards to Google Pay, they don't even carry a plastic anymore.
For past decade I can remember only one situation when I had to use magnetic stripe - to buy train tickets in Israel. I was really shocked, I had to get open app on my phone to enable processing magnetic stripe information for my card.
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Given how much trouble we have with chip readers failing, it's very useful to have the mag strip as a backup.
Huh?
Chip readers failing?
I've had an EMV chip card since 2011, I can't count the amount of times it's failed on one hand because I don't have 0 fingers. I haven't used a magstripe in years. In most of the world, they've stopped even accepting magstripe as I'm pretty sure a new terminal in the UK doesn't even have the reader any more.
Re:That will do away with the backup (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That will do away with the backup (Score:5, Informative)
Here in Canada, we have been chip based for years. I don't think you even can use the mag stripe anymore. Problems are extremely rare. Perhaps the chip readers, where you are, are not working because they get used rarely?
Absolutely. And you're right... I don't think swipe-only transactions for our cards* have been possible for around a decade. It's anecdotal, but I've never had a chip fail to read but back in the dark ages of swiping, that was hit or miss.
*It may be Canadian cards in Canadian readers. Not sure. I think we've still got mag swipe for when we're visiting Other Places, and our POS terminals have swipe readers for when people from Other Places visit us.
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Nobody uses chip readers in Oz anymore (Score:2)
It is all contactless near field.
And indeed, the cool kids just use their phones.
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It is all contactless near field.
Agreed. It's been years since I had to resort to swiping my card. Every reader I've used lately has read my chip without an issue, and about half now offer tap-to-pay.
It's hard to decide if the OP just had bad luck with which pump he selected, but there isn't an easy way to test the card reader in the pump, and move to a different pump if it runs into problems. If I ran into that problem, I would probably walk to the central payment counter and request a $20 pre-pay transaction. If the central payment c
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I've had 3 cards that had chip failures. That's far from most of them, but it's all too frequent. And I've run into several chip readers that failed to read working chips. And it's not because they aren't used. One was in a grocery store that frequently has lines at the cash registers.
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I also often have problems at the grocery store. I think it is that the alignment mechanism gets too much wear and tear, and doesn't align the card properly every time anymore.
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There's a lot of cheap equipment out there, usually provided by the merchant service at no or minimal charge to the merchant. And a lot of cheap merchants that won't swap out terminals that are acting up until they completely fail.
This will alter the definition of "completely fail."
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Agreed - I can't recall the last time I had it fail one me. Sometimes I have to insert it better but it always works.
This is in Texas from San Antonio to Dallas. I'm not sure where the grandparent poster lives.
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Those stores will have to keep their equipment better maintained. You'd do them a favor by reminding them each time that the days of mag strips is coming to and end, and they need to invest in a) better terminals, and b) a proper support contract for them.
Re: That will do away with the backup (Score:3)
You'd do them a favor by reminding them
No you won't. The clerk doesn't give a shit and has no say in the matter regardless.
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If the place is run competently, and some are, the clerk will mention it to the manager if they haven't heard about it already.
If you assume there's no point, then there's no point, and you have nobody to blame but yourself when you can't buy something you really need later on.
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This place is NOT run well but it's half a block from my house, so the convenience outweighs the poor management.
Re:That will do away with the backup (Score:4, Informative)
When the chip doesn't work, wipe the chip contacts with your thumb.
This works 100% of the time for me. I'm not joking or exaggerating; 100% of the times I see "chip malfunction" I swipe my thumb across the contacts, removing the static charge, re-insert the card, and it works.
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Next time, I'll try this, thanks!
Two movies (Score:2)
Later, they used flatbed imprinting machines to record the card information on carbon paper packets, the sound of the swiping of the handle earning them the name, zip-zap machines.
In the movies Serendipity and Payback, such devices are shown in operation (for you yungins out there). The zip-zap can clearly be heard early in Payback when Mel uses a stolen credit card to buy expensive watches. Which he turns around to pawn to buy a gun and get some cash.
About time (Score:5, Insightful)
All they were good for any more by now is skimming and stealing.
Re: About time (Score:2)
They are still very useful due to finicky chip readers. I've been to lots of places where the chip won't work, but the magstrip works fine after three failed chip reads.
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Maybe get a chip reader that works according to specs.
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That's useless advice. How am I, a customer, supposed to make sure the stores I shop at have decent readers? You think I ought to boycott my local grocery store because their chip reader never works?
More times than not, I end up having to swipe the stripe no matter how new my chip card is, or what store I'm trying to use it at. It's not just some chip readers that fail, or some cards. It's most of them, most of the time.
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Yet in Canada we have been using the chip reader exclusively for years now. I remember having issues with one card but only with specific chip readers and only right before the card was to expire. I would just have to try a few times and it would eventually work.
So chip readers can work quite well. At the very least, I have had far fewer problems with chip readers then previously with magnetic strips. I do not recall exactly when the transition from strip to chip was made, but it was a smooth transit
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When mag strips disappear, stores that don't buy decent equipment, or don't maintain it, will lose so much business they'll finally realize they have to spend some money on equipment upgrades if they want to say in business.
In the long run, this will go a long way to solving the problem you describe. But it'll be a painful road for a while, for you and the overworked, underpaid IT guys who get yelled at because the boss won't authorize the expenditure.
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That's strange, I don't think I've ever had to use the magnetic stripe as a backup. The few times I get a chip failure I just plug it in again and it works the second time. I wonder if it's a regional thing.
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Probably, I live in a hot, dry, high altitude location so maybe that has some effect?
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Only if it's the heat - I live in the Denver area, so two out of three. Thankfully it doesn't often hit 100 here.
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I live in Albuquerque so it's probably not the heat either, we have a pretty similar climate. It's probably the poverty and general ass-backwardsness.
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I find that often, if it doesn't work the first time, I can insert it a little bit of the way, and put a finger on the end of the card and push it in that way. I think that often the misreads are due to the alignment mechanism getting worn down and not replaced or repaired, and pushing from the back reduces side to side jiggle on the card.
Another poster suggested running your thumb over the chip to remove static charge, but I can't speak to how well that works.
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They are useless idiots who can't manage their way out of a re useable bag. But the store is literally half a block from my house.
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And when a customer jams their card is so hard they break the internal mechanical parts of the terminal?
(I predict your "solution" to that will be either some form of criminal assault, or some form of legal action, either of which would be far more damaging to the store than accepting the higher level of liability for using the mag strip instead. This is because you have never been involved in any form of business management at any level, and likely have never actually held down a job at all.)
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In this case I have to wonder what kind of flimsy readers or what kind of brutish customers you have. Oddly enough, this has never once happened to any card reader I know.
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You don't get rich by selling chip readers that never break.
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Considering that these things usually come with a maintenance contract attached, yes, yes you do.
Excuse me? (Score:5, Informative)
"And how could clerks tell whether the customer was good for the purchase? They couldn't. Credit card companies would circulate a list of bad account numbers each month, and the merchant would have to compare the customers' cards against the list."
Some of us were actually alive back then. I worked in a music store as a teenager, and remember those old imprinting machines. I don't recall busting my knuckles, ever, but I do remember that it was pretty easy to ruin the multiple-carbon-copy paper form if you were in a hurry and didn't place it in there exactly right.
BUT more importantly - there was a phone number back to the folks at BankAmericard/VISA and MasterCharge. All you had to do was call, and they'd tell you whether the customer had enough room between their balance and their credit limit for the current purchase. We used it all the time.
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BUT more importantly - there was a phone number back to the folks at BankAmericard/VISA and MasterCharge. All you had to do was call, and they'd tell you whether the customer had enough room between their balance and their credit limit for the current purchase. We used it all the time.
But only if it was over your "floor limit." The merchant service didn't want a call for every transaction, and would generally honor the bad ones if they were below the limit.
Re:Excuse me? (Score:4, Interesting)
Makes sense. From what I remember, people weren't charging the little stuff (e.g. guitar strings), mainly more expensive items like the actual instruments. So that may skew my recollection.
Of course we were also instructed to push our own rent-to-buy agreements as much as possible, since in that case extra cash would go to our store.
Side note - I actually was hired to operate and program a TRS-80 the boss had purchased for stuff like payroll and inventory. But at the start of each semester, it was all hands on deck - everybody was working the counter, even the boss (well, he was up there but somehow wasn't handling a whole lot of transactions).
Re: Excuse me? (Score:2)
For high value purchases, merchant's would have typically picked up the phone and called the credit card company before imprinting the card.
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Back then, I only used credit cards for purchases big enough that I didn't want to carry around that much cash. (checks were not necessarily accepted for a lot of big purchases in many stores, unless it was big items shipping days later, alter the check cleared) But if I was using a credit card to spread out payments, I'd consider that to be doing it wrong. There a
Yeah, but... (Score:2)
Today's chip cards are powered by microprocessors that are much more capable and secure, and many are also embedded with tiny antennae that enable contactless transactions.
While these may both be true, they are also more sensitive to magnetic fields and temperature extremes.
On my cards, the contactless use dies off within a month or two, and while the chip lasts longer, it can't take the same level of abuse that the mag strip can
I've been in numerous situations where contactless failed and the chip failed and, if it weren't for the mag strip, I would have been stuck doing dishes to pay for my meal...
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if it weren't for the mag strip, I would have been stuck doing dishes to pay for my meal...
Or the cashier could have just manually entered your CC number, expiration date and CVN.
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The magnetic stripe is less sensitive to magnetic fields. Are you sure about that?
Funnily enough, a lot of the chip/NFC problems in the States are related to the general reluctance of the banks and acquirers to upgrade their infrastructure to handle chip. It only happened (to the extent it did happen, where Chip+PIN isn't really used) because MasterCard and Visa put their feet down about it. Most decent readers allow the manual entry of card data in the case of a chip failure.
Magstripe is horribly insecure
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I don't have hard data to back it up but I'm pretty sure that I have had the mag strip die on my cards more often than the chip. The chip may not work on certain readers but then again certain readers have failed to read the mag strip as well.
Chip-and-pin shifts fraud liability onto customers (Score:2)
My understanding was that in case of fraud (e.g. a waiter copied your credit card details and then made other purchases using your number) and you appealed, then (1) with signature, the credit company sides with you and gives you a refund, (2) with chip and pin the credit card doesn't believe you and you don't get a refund.
This article talks about a different liability shift, and about how chip-and-pin didn't reduce fraud the way banks had expected:
https://threatpost.com/expert-... [threatpost.com]
“Banks believed that replacing magnetic strips with an alternative such as chip and PIN that they would be able to cut fraud,” Anderson said. “Fraud went up, however, then down, and now it’s up again. The overall effect is as if they’ve taken a bulldozer to the landscape; the river of crime is still flowing, just from slightly different channels.”
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That article, which is 7 years old, doesn't state what attackers are doing to steal the cards or carry out the fraud. Yes, the device can be hacked, but it seems like such a thing would be rarer than copying the mag stripe or card number. How is credit card fraud taking place these days? By the way, I get a phone notification every time my card is used so that reduces the risk of fraud, somewhat.
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Your understanding is wrong. The fraud liability moved to shop owner, not the customer.
Also in all jurisdictions which have abandoned the mag stripe fraud at point of sale has reduced. Total fraud has however increased due to a) the ever increasing amount of credit cards in circulation and in use for transaction, and b) most of that fraud moving online. Even with the uptick in total fraud the amount of fraud as a percentage of transaction volume has decreased.
Though fraud has been replaced with new fancier
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Contactless fraud is something of a bogeyman, because to make money off it you have to have a merchant account at a bank for the money to be removed from the cardholder's account so it's really easy to track. Of course there have been some attacks demonstrated but they are quite complex to do and there's little evidence that it is happening in a widespread manner.
Never had a chip failure (Score:2)
I see tons of comments here about chip failures...I've been actively using my chips since they debuted in the US years ago. I can count on one hand the number of times I had to resort to a magstrip on systems that had chip readers installed. The lady who cuts my hair still uses the old school Square magstrip reader, a couple smaller shops still only have those, but outside of that, only once has the chip reader failed, and it was a known issue at that gas station at that particular pump. I walked into th
dear US of A (Score:3, Insightful)
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We will probably never do chip+pin. Our industry simply eats the cost of rampant transaction theft that occurs here. Because like in every industry, you can always pass your costs onto the consumer.
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We will probably never do chip+pin. Our industry simply eats the cost of rampant transaction theft that occurs here. Because like in every industry, you can always pass your costs onto the consumer.
The irony is that US banks have a much lower fraud detection threshold compared to European ones because Chip and Pin was so successful at reducing card fraud. Think $5 for US banks and $20 for European ones.
That is reducing on the European side as online transactions and NFC have introduced new weaknesses. EMV (Chip and Pin) is still very secure, but being bypassed by less secure methods and technologies.
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The US was the first one to adopt this stuff, so it enjoyed decades of being ahead, followed by decades of inertia on the part of merchants who are reluctant to pay for technologies that don’t provide them with any benefits that have kept it from adopting better technologies. It’s only with the recent-ish fraud liability switch that they’ve finally had the incentive to switch.
And switch, we have.
For my part, I think old gas pumps are the only place I’ve consistently had to use a mag
Progress too slow! One ring to rule them all now! (Score:2)
Seriously, so sick of the thousands of mag strip loyalty cards needed for travel, plus the never ending accumulation of magstripe hotel room keys. WHY!? I want to swipe my hand and pay. I want to not check in at a front desk ever, just book online, walk by face scanner and check into room unlocking the door with my one-ring without speaking to anyone. I want to attach my one-ring to many different credit accounts, and let a screen allow choice at purchase time. I want a one-ring reader on my laptop so I don
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I would never want to walk by a face scanner to check in. And, anyway, I would rather talk to the person at the desk, including maybe getting some information I might want. (and I'm a pathologically shy person.)
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check into room unlocking the door with my one-ring without speaking to anyone.
This sounds like a very isolated sort of existence, I can only imagine suicide rates climbing in such a society. I never imagined that people would associate convenience with being a hermit. Because there is little stopping someone from being a hermit, certainly not a lack of technology.
I want a one-ring reader on my laptop so I dont have to enter the credit card info.
I think most laptops should have included a chip+pin reader, but they don't and never will. I suspect there is just too much competition between ring manufactures and transaction providers for anything universal to show up.
Cash is king (Score:2)
While I make a little bit of cash back or airline discounts on my credit cards. I can fill my gas tank cheaper with cash and more places take only cash than take only credit. (but maybe I'm not shopping at fancy places)
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Why have a card at all? (Score:2)
Just use your phone or smartwatch as your credit card. If you lose your phone, just call th... oh, umm or just get on your computer and cancel your card. If the thieves have your finger or face to authenticate into your phone you have bigger problems. Most people notiuce their phone is missing faster than their credit card or wallet.
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I can't say my credit card has ever run out of battery.
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Credit cards need to be phased out (Score:2)
Credit cards are predatory inherently dangerous technology which impose unnecessary and unreasonable taxes on everyone.
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I see. Well, my laptop broke, will you loan me money for a new one instead? Or do you suggest I save up for a year and lose money/education in the meantime?
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I see. Well, my laptop broke, will you loan me money for a new one instead? Or do you suggest I save up for a year and lose money/education in the meantime?
Credit != Credit card
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Still a thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't know stripe tech was still in the wild. In Canada, we did away with stripe cards a decade ago. Everything went Chip + Pin and NFC/EMC.
Amazing that this old school tech is still kicking around.
PIN (Score:2)
There is no good reason to remove the magstripe. It is a good backup for the chips, which I have had fail far more often than I would expect. And the cost is super-minimal.
Security problems with credit cards being used "in person" are almost completely in markets where customers don't have to use a PIN (password). And that is remarkably stupid. We all use a PIN every time with an ATM. It should be standard everywhere for credit card use and would probably stop most fraud immediately.
Not in Oz (Score:2)
I haven't seen a Mag stripe reader here in Australia in 15 years or more. I haven't paid anything with a cheque either in that time.
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