It's still in use as the backup of all backups, as carbon copy imprinters can be used without electricity or telecommunications. In times of disaster (i.e. Japan's Tohoku earthquake of 2011 or Hurricane Sandy in 2012), these things come into action.

Hence, somethings like raised numbers (though some cards these days are coming out without them) are better kept intact in consideration for out-of-the-ordinary situations like natural disasters and such which carbon copy imprinters come into action.

I don't know about the US but they've had a 0 floor limit for a few years in the UK now, so for a retailer to be guaranteed funds they have to call up for every single transaction.

I don't know but I'm pretty sure some floor limit is allowed when authorisation isn't feasible. For example, I used a Visa card in Glacier National Park last week - a long ways from any phone/internet/mobile service and the transaction was offline. Swipe card, sign receipt, done. No authorisation and no way authorisation would've been possible.

Afterwards, I wished I'd tried my Bluebird card just to see if they'd have taken it which DOES have zero floor limit and it clearly says so on the card.

I recently used my new Citi VISA AA card that has a chip, and when the attendant swiped it, it did not work. He asked his supervisor who said that the reader did not work for cards with chips and told him to manually input in the card number. He did and it worked that way. I have not had any other problems with a card reader not reading the info off the magnetic strip.

From personal experience, many machines completely ignore the service code anyway or the machine asks if the merchant is sure they want to process it offline. Chip cards are a different story and will automatically decline the transaction with no override possible.

I meant the floor limit on the manual imprinters, floor limits for electronically processed transactions are still allowed as some sort of electronic data is stored. There are still several transactions that work offline, Contactless in most EMV countries is offline (Unless its a prepaid card)

I don't think any of these people have any clue how to process an EMV transaction. The reader must have been working overwise it wouldn't have asked for him to insert it. Even if its not set up fully with the AIDS he would insert it and it would then tell him and let him swipe it.

I think for the most part majority of the part time cashiers in the US have not had any training whatsoever yet on what to do when an EMV transaction is to be done.

We're just starting to do the EMV switchover now.

Somehow I doubt Taco Bell part-time employees, let alone their store managers, let alone regional managers have the slightest clue about EMV, and the only person that knows about EMV is coming is the financial tech person at Taco Bell HQ in an office in Irvine, CA who has yet to coordinate with HR to update the SOP employee handbook manual.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case:

Taco Bell cashier: "Haven't heard about it"
Taco Bell store manager: "Haven't heard about it"
Taco Bell regional manager: "Haven't heard about it"
Taco Bell regional director: "Haven't heard about it"
Taco Bell HQ HR: "Haven't heard about it"
Greg Creed (Taco Bell President & CEO): "Haven't heard about it"
Glenn Bell (Taco Bell founder): "Haven't heard about it"
Taco Bell financial tech guy: "Oh yeah, the EMV project has been sitting in my inbox for the past couple of months"

:D

Taco Bell here doesn't have EMV terminals, just old school PAR swipe registers so that must vary by location if you've actually seen them at Taco Bell. And they sure know about EMV (well, the three people who are friends of mine at least :) ).

What I find ironic is Wendy's here DOES have EMV terminals, which is just bizarre to me given they're whining about the liability shift due to how much EMV terminals cost. They already have them!

And yes, the problem being seen here is lack of a clue. Walmart needs to hurry up and get EMV enabled at all their stores! Once Walmart moves, like it or not, the industry as a whole moves.

I'm not sure why they don't follow the prompts though, terminals are set up in a way to give the merchant the least liability properly. You'd think the managers atleast would just say, "Do what the machine tells you".

I was in a Wendy's with a colleague and we had to show the cashier how to process it but he was quite happy to go along with what the machine asked him to do and we both completed our chip and pin transaction sucessfully.

Do Wendy's now run as EMV?

Its a franchise so I gather some will and some won't.

I had a craving for Wendy's today. I haven't had it in so long and don't plan on changing that though. The bitter taste of hate just ruins the food.

I'm just confused about their square burgers.

But back on topic, I've actually had something similar happen to me- in Japan of all places. I was shopping at a Daiso and tried to use my chipped UnionPay debit card. The lady tried to stick it in the slot on the PIN pad, but it kept bouncing it back out. Swiping it worked, but it took a while for her to think of trying that.

Oddly enough, the same seems to be the case with ATMs. No Application ID shows up on my ATM withdrawal receipts- not from Mizuho, not from Aeon, not from Citi, not a one.

Haha I must admit, first time in ages I've been to Wendy's or any fast food chain for that matter.

McDonalds in the UK is a bit of an exception as I sometimes get a McFlurry after work but thats only because American Express normally has a £1 contactless offer and the McFlurry is also £1 so its free :P

American Fast food does seem to be more edible though :P Fish and Chips is the only decent sort of fast food in the UK.

Most ATMs I encounter internationally (Outside of Europe) don't show AID on receipt, I'm not sure they've even bothered to roll out EMV ATMs lol

Even a lot of ATMs here in Europe still aren't EMV enabled. Hotel ATMs are often still insert and pull out even in the UK. I don't mind though, lets me check my card hasn't demagnetised. Thats one of my biggest fears upon arriving in the US lol, suddenly find all of my cards are duds. Although I don't think I've ever had a magstripe go bad ever.

The Wendy's down here in SoCal doesn't have them (at least the ones I go to), whereas all the Carl's Jr. that I've been to have the newer EMV capable terminals (none of which are activated)

I guess part of the fear of "oh noes it's going to cost more for upgrades waaah" whining done by retailers and merchants is that they haven't paid any real attention to what equipment they have right now. Most likely, if they did a POS terminal replacement within the past few years, they already came with EMV slot pre-built in!


It's kinda like saying oh no, everything is going Blu-ray, now I have to buy a Blu-ray player, uhh...but when you replaced your "DVD player" a year ago, you essentially bought a Blu-ray player but you've been using it only to watch DVDs.

D'oh!

:D

I'm not sure American and British fast food are any different? I mean you don't have Taco Bell but that's the only real difference I can think of. I do love Taco Bell cause it's so cheap, but that's not a huge difference overall.

£1 free for using contactless? Dang I wish there was stuff like that here. We don't even really have contactless in the US. A few credit cards have it but not very many anymore (a few years ago it was much more common). I have Google Wallet on my phone, but VERY few phones have that. McDonald's, Macy's, Sports Authority, most Home Depots, and a handful of other places in theory take contactless payments - MOST contactless terminals out there (Old Navy, Best Buy, Staples, Walgreens, etc) are, like most EMV terminals, disabled and set to swipe only.

Macy's is the really interesting one - if you use contactless here, you will crash the register! Of course, same thing with Walmart gift cards at Walmart in the self check lanes (maybe fixed, they've taken down the signs warning you not to use gift cards).

I have the AA Citi Executive MC card, but the "chip" isn't a real chip (compare it with an international card with a chip - it's smaller and has fewer slots). It can be used at the EMV readers, but asks for a signature. I've used mine in Europe a number of times. I did ask AmEX about a chip card for my Delta Reserve account and was told "we'll have it around the end of the year or so, upon request; it's already on the Centurion card".

So are you saying a SIM card without the optional contacts isn't a "real" SIM card? Contacts C4 and C8 are optional. Some credit cards/SIM cards/other smart cards have them; some don't. They're not even used. Their presence or absence makes a card no more or less real.

As for the signature, that's totally unrelated. That's what's called cardholder verification method. Signature sucks, but American banks are using it because they fear customers would forget PINs and thus not use their cards.

alexmt: I assume you are correct. It is just that my AA Citi card's chip is different from my other chip cards.

I have a debit card from a Canadian credit union that has the same-size chip, so it's not exactly unique to Citi.

They all vary in size, my debit UK debit card is very small but I find that My Amex and Capital One both have very big chips. I find contactless cards tend to have the big ones.

I found that interesting so I Googled why dual-interface cards might have "the big ones" (that is ones with contact pads C4 and C8 - unused optional pads). I very quickly found that on dual interface cards (at least on many), pads C4 and C8 (otherwise unused) function as an antenna connector.

Question answered, it seems. US cards are never ever dual interface (there are no contactless EMV cards on the US market), thus why most don't have C4/C8. Interesting insight.

Actually, there are several cards that are dual interface which comes with both contactless and contact EMV within a single card:

US Bank FlexPerks Travel Rewards card
https://www.usbank.com/credit-cards/...ks-travel.html
http://pressreleases.visa.com/phoeni...ePR&ID=1572827

and

several BofA cards
go to BofA's "view all credit cards" page, select "view more filters" and filter cards that have both "Tap & Pay" and "Chip Cards"
https://www.bankofamerica.com/credit...redit-cards.go

narrows down to about 8 BofA credit cards that have both contactless features AND contact EMV.


It's also a filterable selection in the EMV Google Docs spreadsheet (Column I says "RFID or NFC contactless chip") to show which EMV cards also have the contactless feature.

I'm not seeing anything on the US Bank site indicating the FlexPerks has both contact and contactless, but if it has contactless notice in the picture it's also shown with the C4 and C8 pads.

As for Bank of America, I'm PRETTY sure it's an either/or (you can get contact EMV or contactless MSD).

Not true.
In Canada if you need to bypass the PIN, you can put the wrong end of the card inside/upside down.
After 2 or 3 times, the machine should say
CHIP FAILURE
USE MAG STRIPE
Swipe card
Approved.
(machine in question is VX 810)
There are some Canadian AMEX cards that don't have working chips either.
In HK my HSBC card has a chip but I sign for all purchases.

My chip is approximately the size of three to four numerical figures on my card (4519/4514/4530)

I meant the actual proper PIN-Bypass, some merchant machines can press a button to completely bypass the pin entry. Forcing the card to fallback is a whole different matter :P

The meaningful question is if it has C4/C8? If so, is it dual interface? It seems as if C4/C8 may be used as an antenna connector on dual interface cards.

The US Bank FlexPerks product page shows both the EMV chip and the contactless logo on the back for VISA payWave specifically stating it can be used both ways:
https://www.usbank.com/splash/credit...wards-emv.html

Interesting. I wonder how this works since I thought most contactless merchants in the US could only handle contactless MSD. Anyone with a contactless reader able to read one of these and see what it presents on its contactless interface? And again it still fits my theory since the card has C4/C8.

As for BofA I'm still pretty sure it's a choice between contact EMV *or* contactless MSD.

Which merchants shouldn't be doing as they're accepting liability for the transaction as they are overriding the card's security features.

For BofA, you can get both but the contactless will be a mobile payment tag (those things that you stick to your cell phone or what not)

For one selected with both Tap-and-Pay and Chip Cards filter, I chose BofA Cash Rewards and opened their application. Without filling anything in, towards the bottom of the application there is this checkmark section:

http://i.imgur.com/He8B6Wm.jpg


So it's not a true all-in-one feature card like US Bank, but it still gives you an EMV card with a magstripe on the back plus a contactless payment tag to do credit card processing in three ways (four if you want to include the old carbon copy imprinting of the raised numbers).

Had a funny experience today at a restaurant. I was paying my bill and the waitress asked me what the chip was. I just said something like 'oh, it just makes payments easier in Europe'. Her response: 'OMG, you're European! I've never met a real European before!'

Which isn't a dual-interface card :) I didn't know dual-interface cards with contact EMV and contactless MSD were possible, but either US Bank has them or contactless terminals in the US are more EMV capable than I realised.

Of course, it would be up to V/MC to prove the card was in fact working and not defective.
I think this is why some terminals just say 'NOT ACCEPTED' in the event of chip failure.

Nope, they don't have to prove anything. What the merchant is supposed to do if the chip does not work is refuse the card and ask for another form of payment.

About 90% of POS terminals used in the US are made by Ingenico (France) or Verifone (Silicon Valley), both of which sells terminals to EMV compliant countries all over the world (except for Japan because they make their own terminals - go figure).

If you think like a corporate MBA, it'd make sense for Ingenico and Verifone to cut costs by mass producing POS terminals that has the magnetic stripe, EMV, and contactless all built into one device (or is capable of doing via simple upgrade) rather than producing one set of line up for specifically for Europe, another specifically for Asia, and the other specifically for the US.

Cheaper to manufacture and sell:

One single POS terminal that does (or is capable of doing via simple upgrade) mag-stripe+EMV+contactless

in which the rest of the world uses all three features
and in US uses only the mag-stripe and/or contactless feature (but is capable of turning on EMV feature if need be, which is *supposed* to be happening right now :p)


Kinda like electronics these days. Doesn't make sense for electronic manufacturers to produce one lineup for 100V (Japan), another line up just for 110-120V (US/Canada) and another for 220-240V (Europe), just make one single line up that handles 100-240V (worldwide).

Umm... NO:

"If the chip-reading device cannot read the chip on the card, it means the
card and chip-reading device have no applications in common . In this
case, you should follow “fallback” requirements and accept the chip card
via standard magnetic stripe transaction processing as prompted on the
terminal screen"

- http://usa.visa.com/download/merchan...-merchants.pdf

They wouldn't really even need to have contactless MSD, EMV contactless would be ok as most MSD machines have been updated now anyway. They could set the contactless to go offline and turn off pin checks. Would work just as well.