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.

What about places like McDonald's where the few chip slots they have don't work but contactless does? Am I wrong in assuming a contactless EMV card would not work on those terminals?

Actually I hate that. I don't want my card to be able to do contactless. I would, which I've told my bank, leave if my bank did. Since they are unable to understand how security works I don't want them to offer such a service. Ever.

The electronics debate is also... well, all of Europe has the same system. Except for the UK. The US has another one. China has 7 different system, but they still has the best system - everything works in the same plug. The US has the worst because the plug never stays.

For credit cards thought, the terminal has never not worked for me. The staff hasn't known how to make it work sometimes, which is fine. If I have a certain security feature that they never encounter - fine. .... happens, I can deal with that.

You will soon be changing your mind when EMV has been rolled out. Its so slow. Although EMV contactless is far more secure and if you have more than one EMV contactless card they interfere with each other so can't be read when together. Also as magstripe will be removed certain things you won't be able to pay for by card without contactless. Like Parking machines, vending machines and subways if any US cities roll out one that supports cards.

I went back this weekend and tried the card again, this time at the main store. She kept swiping over and over and handed it back saying she couldn't use it. So I asked why and she said it was telling her to insert chip. So I told her the machine has a place to insert it and she said she knew that, but it wasn't activated but the machine still won't take a card that has a chip.

She seemed to know how the chip worked, as opposed to the other lady that was clueless. Makes me wonder if the machine is messed up. I told her they should call the company and get that looked at and she said she knows and a lot of people are using those chip cards and its been a problem.

So not sure what's up but sounds like whoever installed those machines messed them up. She swiped it a dozen times unsuccessfully.

Toughts?

Although the chip reader fails, tell her after the 3rd chip attempt it will say CHIP READ ERROR FAILED, SWIPE CARD. The machine will then allow her to swipe. Sounds like non of the Application IDs have been setup on the chip reader. Couldn't she have done the transaction via manual entry atleast?

She's probably doing it wrong. She needs to insert the chip and WAIT until prompted to remove the card.

The security thing that a snooper can steal information from a mile away with contactless cards are overblown IMO. I mean really, if there really is a technology where radio frequencies can be picked up from something that is charged by a battery wafer thin like a credit card and lasts over 10 years on average, seriously that would solve our smartphone battery problems! :D

Furthermore, if it weren't secure, why would countries like from Japan to Singapore to Canada are using them on their debit and credit cards on such a wide scale? If it were a problem, you'd be hearing scammers sniffing out Japanese and Singaporean credit card numbers in their crowded subways but none have hit the news with regards to that.

For someone to steal information out of your credit card, they have to come up really, really close, I mean literally my face-is-in-your-nose up close to get anything and even then the information is gibberish as data for contactless EMV is dynamic data with security keys (it's not a static number data of your actual credit card number).

If you want to learn further, you can read about it by googling "security contactless."

You'd have to wonder if anyone working at the cash register in the US has had ANY training on how to handle EMV cards, especially if majority (if not all) of them today are used to a fast swiping process of the mag-stripe rather than dip card into chip slot, WAIT, follow instructions for the machine to communicate with server, and pops out on its own.

And it shouldn't be that hard.

Shift Leader/Manager at Taco Bell branch:

"OK everyone, listen up. We have a new way of processing credit cards, and I want you to all watch this youtube video on how it's done. It's called Chip-and-PIN/Signature. When you swipe a card and if the thing says 'insert chip' just follow what this youtube video does."

And I'm guessing people like you are why I had to specifically ask to get a tap-to-pay debit card from Citi. But even before that, the banks I've been using in China have slowly been transitioning to EMV and I've been building up my collection of RFID-enabled cards (to say nothing of the multiple apps loaded in my phone). Not once has money been siphoned out of any of my bank or e-wallet accounts.

I imagine contactless hasn't really take off as no signature transactions are just as fast anyway. Most UK issuers now issue it on credit cards although as its mainly an offline technology most banks won't issue it on debit cards if someone doesn't have decent credit as someone could go overdrawn etc.

Haha American Express contactless cards used to crash the tills at Boots in the UK :P The best thing was though that it wasn't even just the one terminal, all the tills crashed and had to be restarted. As you can imagine I was very popular when I missed the sign that said "DO NOT PAY VIA CONTACTLESS ON AN AMERICAN EXPRESS CARD AS THIS CAN CURRENTLY CRASH OUR TILLS."

It used to be great when you swiped a magnetic stripe card at Sainsburys (UK supermarket) self service tills as it asked the customer to sign a receipt that printed out and if their signature matched :P You then had to press Yes or No (To make things even better, if you press no it still approved, the receipt just said UNABLE TO VERIFY SIGNATURE):P My Diners Club is still magnetic stripe only (All UK issued ones are) and I used to have that all the time. Now it actually asks someone to verify it. My Diners Club is crazy though as when I sometimes purchase items in the USA with it through Discover, purchases often never post. I have no idea where the money going to the merchant has been coming from lol.

Ah, yes, I remember that at Sainsburys. I was like "da heck? It's asking ME to confirm whether my own signature matched" - I figured it was just that one Sainburys though.

As for Diners Club, I believe their liability shift worldwide will match the US Discover/Visa/MasterCard of October 2015. They seem in no hurry to go EMV, probably due to insanely low volume.

Sounds like the US merchant's acquirer isn't routing the transaction right. Their fault, their loss.

Kebosabi, curious where you are that Taco Bell has EMV. Here they're PAR registers that have a magstripe reader built-in. Very finicky too, they often have to re-swipe and the employees complain of the junk equipment... I imagine whatever replaces it will be EMV when it gets replaced.

What needs to happen is just a mass push by acquirers to enable EMV on merchants terminals that are capable. Until that happens, it's just confusion. I will note though that what kebosabi said about telling cashier to insert the chip if a swipe says insert chip is WRONG. Per Visa merchant guidelines, if the card and terminal have a chip reader THAT should be the FIRST thing to do, THEN swipe if it fails, not the other way around.