Originally Posted by
Trevallon
The Durbin Amendment required 2 unaffiliated networks be present on US debit cards. So a Visa branded debit card for signature purchases would need a network like NYCE for pin purchases. So US banks who had been intending to implement the same EMV standard used in the rest of the world had to create a new standard for their debit cards, new software for chip terminals a whole new routing protocol for the payment networks. Very expensive and delayed the implementation of chip cards in the US by 3 years. However it doesn’t prevent pay at the table.
Welcome to FT!
Anyway, I think a heavy reliance on integrated POS systems did more to delay EMV than anything else. In addition, routing is a merchant choice, so they could have easily just used the Visa/MC portion of the chip (as a lot of places never did route over debit networks pre-EMV).
Going back on topic, low margins (and lack of regulatory mandates) in the restaurant industry are probably the biggest contributor to a lack of pay at the table, followed by customers simply not liking the concept. I'm not sure the latter dislike is all that strong, though, and may be something that can be worked around.