Originally Posted by
reclusive46
I have to agree that Walmart EMV transactions are very slow compared to the chip and pin transactions I'm used to in the UK. The Walmart terminals seem to take an age to actually ask for my PIN and then it seems to take another 5 seconds to authorise. Normally at supermarkets (or any other retailer that uses broadband) it asks for the PIN straight away and then authorises almost instantly after it says "PIN OK".
I thought those on this thread would appreciate my conversations with a friendly merchant yesterday about EMV and the transition that happened here in Australia:
I was having a conversation with a merchant here in Sydney on Friday afternoon about the Target data breach in the US and how it was really the catalyst that got a lot of people talking about EMV and that banks have started issuing chipped cards within the last year or two. For reference, I told her it would be like Woolworths, Coles, or Priceline (think CVS style store) getting hacked. This whole conversation started after she blindly swiped my card's mag stripe out of habit after learning we were visiting from the US. I told her that my card did have a chip, so a swipe transaction would fail. Sure enough the POS terminal indicated to use the chip. ^
She mentioned the upcoming transition to PIN for domestic cards in Australia, and I said I thought PIN transactions would generally be easier for everybody - I am aware of the potential vulnerabilities - because merchants wouldn't have to try to be handwriting recognition experts and it would be easier to make the assumption that if the person knows the PIN on the card that the person making the purchase is the cardholder.
She then asked if we had PayPass in the US, and I said that while it does exist that there are fewer and fewer cards with the ability to do contactless payments. I told her that the banks and networks such as Visa payWave or PayPass made a push for contactless payments a number of years ago, but contactless payments never really caught on. A combination of people fearing security issues and low number of merchants accepting contactless payments meant that contactless never gain critical mass in the US. However, I mentioned that since EMV transactions capture the card that contactless tends to become more popular after the transition to chip-and-signature or chip-and-PIN. She indicated that was exactly the case in Australia, so there is some hope for the US since we seem to be following the Australian path for EMV.