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1 - I've ordered the replacement for our final gas engine in my household - our ten year old Civic is getting replaced with a Model Y.
2 - Even when I had more gas engines, I was quick to switch to contactless... unattended credit card readers, like those at a gas station, are easily the most common to have card skimmers at them. Card only needs to get skimmed once to decide to stop using gas station card readers.

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I'm most surprised that I work at a credit card processing company and I heard this news from MacRumors before I heard it at work. This is probably a consequence of going all remote... I'm stuck in my corner that focuses on taking payments online, so I don't hear about other people in the office who deal with POS transactions. This kind of info naturally spreads via organic "water cooler" conversation around the office, but now that we're siloed off and only interact with people who are officially working on the same projects as us...

We brought all the Facebook silos and Google bubbles and brought them into the workplace by going remote, to make everyone even more clueless about what they don't know.
I work with someone who drives a Model Y. He says the only thing he doesn’t like about it is the quality of the body panels. Other than that he says it is a great car.
 
I remember when Visa was originally called BankAmericard.
I know there's some history there with Bank of America, but was it really a credit card back then or when they spun off it was like a rebirth?
Because didn't BankAmericard continue after Visa existed as like a "private label" type of credit card, kind of like store credit?
 
Interesting. Here (Europe/EU) our last cards issued by our bank has no magstripe and NO signature either. Cards issued by fintech companies started to omit the mag stripe (and even the signature for some) much earlier.
Generally I have to stick the card into the chip reader once or twice a year. Otherwise, tap the card and no pin (up to 50 USD expressed in dollars) or tap and pin above that. Dont think I have used the mag stripe in this century (even when it existed)
And my own country is far from the most developed part of the EU even…
 
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WHAT? You still use magnetic stripes in the US? Haven't seen one of those in years, let alone used one.
It took too long to happen, but almost every retailer I go to here in New York and New Jersey now use the chip, but there’s the very occasional exception. I guess in other parts of the US, there may be more exceptions. I remember seeing the first card with a chip in Germany over twenty years ago, wondering how long it would take to get to the US.
 
Remind me why there's an Apple Card when there's Apple Pay? Wasn't Apple Pay's big selling point the <1.2 seconds less time it took to fumble through your wallet to pull a card out?
 
I was just thinking about this the other day when I was at Portillo's. The cashier swiped my card 'the old fashioned way' and got me thinking: when are we ever going to get rid of the mag stripe?

My go-to is always going to be Pay via my Watch, followed by chip and then tapping my card to the wireless reader. Hate swiping.
All I saw in that post was Portillo’s!!! :)
 
Had to use the magnetic strip reader for the first time in ages the other day. It was at a gas station/convenience store. Their chip reader wasn't working. Only other method via card was to use the magnetic strip method.

And yeah, very few gas stations around here anyway allow contactless payments. Some show it on the pump, but almost every time the contactless feature wasn't working. Sad.
 
Wow, here in Australia it's nothing but Tap & Go pretty much. Not many people even insert their card anymore and Swiping the card is incredibly rare here now.
 
WHAT? You still use magnetic stripes in the US? Haven't seen one of those in years, let alone used one.

Here in Norway, we still have them - but they are not accepted at domestic terminals, and haven't been for more than a decade.

They are just in place for use in some countries that don't have the same support for chip/NFC as here... AKA third world countries plus the US, home of the checks (which disappeared around 1990 here...)
 
Had to use the magnetic strip reader for the first time in ages the other day. It was at a gas station/convenience store. Their chip reader wasn't working. Only other method via card was to use the magnetic strip method.

And yeah, very few gas stations around here anyway allow contactless payments. Some show it on the pump, but almost every time the contactless feature wasn't working. Sad.

US gas pump readers are weird... the times I've used that as a tourist, the reader doesn't want a pin but a zip code. Which it then won't recognize, as it's not a US 5 digit zip code.
 
Oh yes. VERY common at gas stations. It's very uncommon for me to use contactless at the pump.
Around here at least, CostCo (a membership-based “big box” store) uses a combined credit card / membership card that can be used contactless at their gas pumps (which both checks your membership and pays for the gas). it’s where I get gas most of the time, so I haven’t run a mag stripe card through at a gas pump in a long time.
 
US gas pump readers are weird... the times I've used that as a tourist, the reader doesn't want a pin but a zip code. Which it then won't recognize, as it's not a US 5 digit zip code.
The gas pumps will use a pin if it’s a debit card, but will require your home zip code for a credit card, as a sort of very weak “did you just find this card laying on the ground” test - because the pump has only a numeric keypad and no way to accept a signature (and yes, that’s archaic from every angle).
 
Regarding "signatures" on credit card receipts I always just put a squiggly line. I got called out for the first time in years for it in Germany of all places! An older lady in a gift store in a touristy area said, "Come on, that's not really your signature!" and she was right!

US gas pump readers are weird... the times I've used that as a tourist, the reader doesn't want a pin but a zip code. Which it then won't recognize, as it's not a US 5 digit zip code.

I never thought about that for international visitors. Did you ever find a way around it with your cards?

Around here at least, CostCo (a membership-based “big box” store) uses a combined credit card / membership card that can be used contactless at their gas pumps (which both checks your membership and pays for the gas). it’s where I get gas most of the time, so I haven’t run a mag stripe card through at a gas pump in a long time.

Oh I love Costco but I don't have their store card. I get much better rewards on my other cards and want to build up points on them.
 
Banks have nothing to do with it. All the cards in the US are already issued with chips. Each business decides what type of reader to use.
Banks have everything to do with it. Make all of the ATM's NFC accessible and sunset physical cards in 3 years. Done.

Businesses will either finally enable the NFC in their existing machines or upgrade.

It's like all of the people that had rotary phones....you have to eventually move on people.

Edit: Oh - and for all of those saying we still need cash - you'll get there. I don't carry my wallet anymore. Only use ApplePay (for the most part) - my credit card limit for contactless is $250, so big purchases still need to bring the physical card (which is ridiculous as Apple Pay is actually more secure). My drivers license is in my vehicle. Only take my health card with me when I have an appointment, etc.

If they get rid of the physical cards, how do people hack your account when it's now a 256-bit triple des hash that only your device and the banks/credit card companies know relates to your account? Getting rid of the plastic eliminates fraud (well, except for your identical twin who can Face ID unlock your phone) :D
 
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Digital only works when there's no outage.

Good thing that's never happened before ;)




Great idea? Really?

That was only Apple Card - hopefully Apple hired someone from Visa or MasterCard to go through their systems and figure out WTF they did wrong that such a thing could ever happen.

I've been using Apple Pay ever since it launched in Canada - only glitch I had was when the Beer Store in Ontario had some bad software revisions on their terminals that were impacting contactless payment....glitch got fixed, problem went away.

But, you DO raise a good point - that they need to ensure there's logic in the system that they can still process these cards when their internet connection goes down.
 
Everything's getting more secure. I've never seen a POS (...that's point of sale..) Terminal that need swipe. So, bring it on.
 
My experience as well. I have a different gas station to go to get the points with the card.
The biggest slap in the face was a Racetrack with "we've installed the latest security measures" sticker on the pump. Then when you put in your credit card the screen asked you to remove the card quickly. Yay for swiping. :rolleyes:
 
It's so weird and surprising to know that US is still so behind when it comes to cards. Here in Italy cards are issued with both chip and mag stripe, but the second one isn't supported anymore, so if you try to use it the payment won't succeed; to be honest, I have never used mag stripe, nor have I seen a card reader which supports mag stripe for at least 15/20 years, I have only used chip + PIN before and contactless (or Apple Pay) consistently for the last 5+ years as all the card readers started to support NFC too. I just have a vague memory of my father swiping his card a couple of times when I was a kid.

No issue at all at gas stations where you can usually pay with chip + PIN and sometimes even contactless at the pump itself. Besides that, here it's mandatory for merchants to have a card reader, unless you go to a town in the middle of nowhere because in that case unfortunately you may still find someone without it. The only negative thing is that merchants push you not to use card when you pay for small amounts (let's say under 5€) because of card fees.

I don't understand when you talk about fails because I've never experienced one. Are they due to old junk card readers?
 
Hard to say. Sometimes it won't register and you just shrug your shoulders and pay with a card.

I'm going to blame Verifone for at least part of it. Their firmware in general seems...not great, at least with the now previous gen devices (MX915, etc.) Combined with most stores in the US using their hardware and trying their hands at customizing the UI/firmware, it means that NFC fails more than it should for sure. I don't notice nearly the same issues with Ingenico or other manufacturers' devices.
 
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