Originally Posted by
RedLight2015
I don't even care if we go PIN for everything else but restaurants at this point. I would like a proper PIN so I can use my card 100% of the time everywhere I go.
A PIN preferring card definitely won't work 100% of the time in the US, unfortunately.
(And by "won't work", I mean it'll offline decline and cancel the transaction.) It's even questionable whether you'll be given the opportunity to enter a PIN at all at most places.
Originally Posted by
Points Scrounger
When you say "pay at the table", does that include places like Red Robin, where one can actually swipe one's card and add the tip, and of course have to sign on screen with the finger, and then have a receipt emailed if needed? Would you consider having a server bring a mobile phone with a swipe dongle so you can pretty much do the same thing on a smaller screen? Or, do you mean a full-blown European experience? I have had the last one once at a restaurant where I noticed they took contactless on the (FD I think) terminal he brought, so I tapped, but had to sign as it was well over $25.
I think all of those count as "pay at the table" in my opinion. I'd also include paying through an app such as OpenTable.
The problem is that it's not strictly necessary to have that here thanks to a predominantly chip and signature environment (and if we ever did switch to PIN, the restaurant terminals will probably continue to be signature-only unless forced otherwise by merchant agreements or law). Because of that, pay at the table seems to be more of a side-effect of other stuff the big chains are doing. For instance, the Ziosk tablets let you pay for games while you're waiting for your food to show up, increasing the restaurant's revenue.
Out of curiosity, it'd be interesting to find out what the cost differential is between, say, a FD130 and whatever their non-Clover wireless terminal is.
Originally Posted by
RedLight2015
Having the customer enter the amount seems to just be asking for trouble. They would just change it to 0.01 or something ha.
It's pretty easy for the police to figure out the cardholder's identity from the card number alone, so probably not a good idea on that person's part.