kebosabi

With more stories like this start becoming a recurrent problem across the nation, it is likely that it will:
New York waiters busted for stealing credit card numbers
Olive Garden Waiter in Austin Caught Skimming Customer Credit Cards
HPD: Waiter at Red Robin in Katy used skimmer to steal customers' credit card info
Florida Waitress Repays Bad Tippers By Stealing Credit-Card Info
Waiter Walks Off With Customer's Credit Cards: Dallas Police
John David Woody Ripped Off Customers At Plaza Restaurant, Kansas City, Mo.
Credit Card Skimming – The New Face of Fraud in California
Olympia teen sentenced for credit card skimming
Atlanta PD: Taco Mac waitress skimmed customer credit cards
6 charged in skimming scheme at restaurants, Wrigley Field - Chicago

In fact, some US restaurants have started jumping onto that idea:
Select restaurants around the nation are testing table-based credit card readers that allow customers to pay for there meal at the table.
After waiter's arrest, Drago's in Metairie ordering handheld credit card terminals

percysmith

I'm in a Visa/MV EMV, Amex Magstripe jurisdiction (hong kong). No pin authentication allowed for transactions here and uk-based bills of exchanges laws apply.

Under HK$193 transactions (visa) and under HK$500 transactions (Amex) at large chains like mcdonalds and Starbucks exempted from signature by card association policy. Visa paywave/mc paypass valid to $500 per transaction.

Transactions not falling under either category has to be signed for.

- chains running daily transactions (supermarkets, FMCG) - as per kerosabi says - no real checking - just as long as any signature is collected it's fine
- owner operated businesses hate cards anyway, and scrutinise signatures very carefully. I've been asked to repeat signatures at these places.
- retail shops selling high-value goods scrutinise signatures very seriously, as there's a very liquid second-hand market for a lot of stuff (jewellery, phones, designer goods). I've just paid for a big jewellery purchase at a jewllery shop in the CBD where my parents have made at least three $100K (around US$10K) transactions before, the salesman (same one) still scrutinises my signature seriously. I'm also asked to sign on the invoice.

I generally feel safe under these protections - to the extent I don't mind keeping a lot of cards.

I suppose the biggest contributor to my confidence of the signature protection here is that there's an onus on the card issuer to prove fraudulent transactions should stand. I can challenge any card-present transaction by making a police report (which can be done online) and then asking the card issuer for the card slip. If the card slip has bad signature then they have to submit CCTV footage or have their staff pick me out on an ID parade. With PIN, the onus falls on me to get myself out of the transaction, and with HK levels of customer service I believe this will be very hard to do.

Here I'm far more likely going to scammed in a Card Not Present environment than a Card Present one.

cbn42

After reading the tip thread over in Travel Buzz, my feeling is that one of the reasons American banks and businesses are pushing chip-and-signature instead of chip-and-PIN is in order to get more tips. If a customer needs to sign a receipt, it is easy to ask them to fill in the tip and total on the same receipt. If they need to enter a PIN, then giving them a separate receipt and pen just to fill in the tip is a bit awkward.

percysmith

I think with the Chip and PIN restaurant model, the customer can (has to?) input a tip before keying in the PIN. The tip gets hardcoded into the receipt. If there is such a misconception in the US that Chip and PIN = no tip then the banks can do some merchant education to eliminate that misconception?

JEFFJAGUAR

At the restaurant chain Wagamama in the UK and I am sure in others, it works this way. They bring the pos terminal to your table and they either swipe the card if it is an archaic USA card or insert it in the chip slot if it's a modern 21st century card, enter the amount, and hand you the termnal and tell you to follow the instructins on the screen. The instructions ask you to press the enter button if you wish to add a tip, then after you do they ask you to enter the amount of the tip (it's London so I just use 10%, knocking off the last digit so a meal for Ł15.75 means a tip of Ł1.58, enter it and the terminal asks if the amount of Ł17.33 is correct press thed enter button and hand the terminal back to the waiter. The waiter prints a receipt for me to sign if it's an archaic USA magnetic strip card and hands me a receipt or simply prints a receipt if it's a modern 21str century chip and pin card.

Sev eral times at other branches of the chain, they have forgotten to hand me the terminal, they swipe and print the receipt which has no room for a tip and they get no tip. Works neatly too.

jamar

What's the last part supposed to mean?

JEFFJAGUAR

That's what happens when you can't see that well and you put your hands on the keys one key off.

Thank you. It's been corrected!

pensguin68

regardless of security, as was mentioned just a few posts before, it can be very hard to purchase via CC in the UK if you don't have a card with a chip. As someone who is usually there at least once a year, I would like to see CCs that are marketed as being great for people who travel a lot having this chip. Last time I was in the UK several times I couldn't pay for stuff at convenience or grocery stores. Very frustrating. Nice to see the Chase BA visa now coming with the chip...good/necessary move on their part.

JEFFJAGUAR

I guess it has to do with just where in the UK you're talking about. I visit London a couple of times a year and quite frankly, I've never had the slightest bit of trouble at any merchant using an tinquated American credit card (I do have a chipped AA Citibank mastercard but don't5 use because of the near criminal 3% foreign transaction fee just in case. I've tried the chipped card for a few very small purchases say one or two quid at convenience stores of the like where the 3% is not a big deal and they most assuredly do work but I've never had to.

However I wouldn't doubt that in many more remote (if they exist) areas of the UK, the hired help might not be familiar with magnetic strip only cards. But at least, since English and American are very closely related languages, you can explain what has to be done.

kebosabi

MasterCard to Foster Industry Collaboration in Preparation for EMV Migration

Interesting to see if VISA and Discover, the two other networks that announced their EMV plans, would join in on MC proposal.

Hopefully it'll be for the better good to align the US standard to Chip-and-PIN as with other countries instead of Chip-and-Signature.

OverThereTooMuch

Seems like wishful thinking if you got that from this PR

It'll take months to form the groups. Weeks/months of discussion as they identify all of the areas they want to standardize. Then months after that before they get to agreement on each of those areas. Then they have to start communicating those out broadly to their partners. Best case, I'd say you'd be looking at EOY 2013 before you started to see any rollout from things agreed on at this working group.

If anything, forming another "cross-industry group" is more likely to slow down the adoption. This is several years overdue, and I'd bet that there's already at least one "cross-industry group" that was supposed to address these problems. What is that group, and what were the sticking points?


(oh ok, the caption says meetings, but the same thought applies )

percysmith

From where I come from cross-industry groups are like inter-deparmental committees govts use to smother political/popular proposals in red tape:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphre...er_and_history

kebosabi

I think it'll go a lot more quicker than imagined. The key foundations have already been laid out independently and is already moving along. It's like different parties are already heading towards the same destination, but using different ways and methods to get there. All it needs is a steer to the correct alignment.

Here's why I think it'll go much smoother:

From the network side
VISA preferring Chip-and-Signature
MC preferring Chip-and-PIN
Discover preferring to leave that decision up to merchants
AMEX being oddly silent about their plans despite issuing EMV cards abroad

From the issuers side
Chase and others preferring Chip-and-Signature as it's a cheaper option, whereas Andrews FCU and others preferring Chip-and-PIN as their clientele mainly caters to those that are stationed abroad where Chip-and-PIN is the norm.

From the co-branded side
BA, AA, and Hyatt wanting to make their clients keeping using their cards when they travel abroad rather than putting them at the bottom of their wallet as useless plastic and paying by cash instead.

From the big name merchant side
Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target and BestBuy wanting an alignment to Chip-and-PIN in the US as well because signature authentication is useless in today's world.

From the law enforcement and smaller merchants side
Concerns of rising skimming fraud from antiquated magnetic stripes hoping card companies to do something about it.

From the POS manufacturers side
Verifone and Ingenico wittering their fingers like Mr. Burns and saying "Excellent" waiting for big $$$ to come in as merchants need to upgrade their terminals.

And big brother saying
Charging hefty transaction fees for debit cards is a consumer no-no, but we're willing to give you a break if you come up with something more secure than a magnetic stripe *hint hint*

OverThereTooMuch

You look at that list and see that as a sign things will be SMOOTH? To me, that's an excellent list of potential roadblocks.

The Visa vs. MC and/or C&P vs. C&S battles alone are enough to torpedo any sort of collaboration.

Also, the more people involved in these sorts of things, the longer it seems to take to get to agreement.

Have these guys all voiced this opinion already?

I thought it was the issuers who were offering discounts of some sort for using something that's more secure. Why would govt regulations say (effectively) "ok to screw anyone that's using one of your new whiz-bang technology cards", and more importantly, why would banks believe for an instant that we'd put up with that again?

kebosabi

Yes. Walmart even stated many times that "signature authentication is worthless" and that they prefer Chip-and-PIN. http://www.digitaltransactions.net/news/story/3424


The Durbin Amendment in the Dodd-Frank Act is active now and has been since October of last year.

The banks did try to issue a block on it citing the exact same concerns as you did and there have been news articles about it, but practically no one in the US cared about it so it's now law.

From the American consumers perspective, why not? Everyone uses magnetic stripe for debit cards and if it means interchange fees will be lowered hurray! Oops, too bad no one really paid attention about the "more secure technology" loophole - a provision made in consideration for banks to recuperate the costs of switching to a "more secure technology."

Basically, that gives an incentive for banks to move over to EMV for debit cards. Since they won't be making as much money from debit transactions over mag-stripe, they'll just move over to EMV based debit cards.

http://datacardedge.com/articles/the...e-a-back-seat/

Those that are smart, (i.e. SECU of NC) have already done so in light of this. They are the first issuers of EMV based debit cards.