dulciusexasperis

The problem here ICEROCK is like many people, you assume people understand what you are saying because they have a card the same as your own. That's simply not the case.

When you bought the laptop from Costco, just exactly what did you do with your card? It certainly isn't clear to me. You took out your card and then....................? Specifically, physically, what did you then do with your card?

I live in Canada where we have true Chip and PIN cards like the rest of the world except for the USA. When using my card in Canada or in Europe, I either put the card in a slot in the merchants card reader or swipe it down the side for the magnetic strip to be read. THEN I enter my PIN number into the machine and the charge gets approved.

There are some US issued cards that are true Chip and PIN but most are CHIP and Signature. You need to understand the difference. Now what you appear to be saying is that signatures are being done away with as a means of verification. OK, what is the signature being replaced with?

I'm guessing you are just 'tapping' the card on the merchants card reader. We do that here in Canada for purchases up to $100 but must enter a PIN for all purchases over $100. If you are just tapping your card for a $1000 laptop purchase, that to me is yet another failing on the part of US card issuers. If you drop your card on the ground and I pick it up, can I just 'tap' it and buy myself a $1000 computer charged to your card? I certainly wouldn't want a card that would allow that to happen.

I'm wondering about the comment, "I never bought the signature against fraud, I always draw a circle on the pad". It sounds to me like your card issuer offers you a guarantee against fraud if you pay for it and sign for all purchases, in which case it implies that if you didn't, YOU are liable for any fraud, not the card issuer. Do you really understand what you are liable for or not with your card?

ICEROCK

No, insert your card, after about a second, your transaction was approved. Never heard of tapping in US. US card issuers are eliminating the signature requirement, and major retailers are following through. Signature is not a really an effective or useful way to prevent fraud, that is why US card issuers are abandoning this ridiculous and ineffective practice. Tons of signature pad in US have touch issues, you write on that pad is nothing like your real signature anyway. LOL A pin is a much secure method than the signature.

ICEROCK

Thanks, I already did that. Costco Visa gives you 3% on travel, hope all the European train, subway rides count as the travel expense.

dulciusexasperis

So what you are telling me if I understand it, is that anyone can insert your card into the card reader and it will approve the transaction? That means, if you drop your card and I pick it up, I get a free shopping spree until you notice you don't have it and get the card issuer to cancel that card.

JBord

Yes, that's what it means. It doesn't work that way at every vendor, so you may not have much success going on a shopping spree. But that's exactly how it works at my grocery store now.

To be fair, the signature was never a safeguard anyway, so it's no less safe than before. I could sign anyone's name, no one ever verified anything. Ultimately, the US needs to move to the chip & pin system.

Hoyaheel

Some vendors in the US do check ID with name on the credit card. I've had this happen to me within the past two months. It seems to happen more in touristy areas or shopping centers? That's just a guess based on personal experience (and though I've been a customer at my Costco since it opened in 2006, I do not have a photo on my Costco visa card, so there is still ONE cashier who asks me for my ID every time....)

ICEROCK

Yep, but it is not any different compared to before. No system verified the signature, you can draw or sign anything you want, and the card went through every time just fine. With or without the signature is the same lol. And I have disputed many transactions with the card issuers, and they don't seem to care the signature either. Pin is a much safer security measure.

Finkface

In Canada, in certain places (mostly touristy destinations), they will not accept a non-Chip and Pin card without accompanying photo id. For example, in Whistler, many stores require a photo id to use a non-C&P. card. I see people asked all the time in the grocery store I frequent and they have big signs at the checkouts.

tmiw

My understanding is that AmEx eliminated the requirement worldwide while the others have mostly limited it to North America (I don't recall the specifics offhand). Of course, this doesn't mean that merchants will necessarily follow though.

I can't comment on the rest of Europe but I don't recall signatures being looked at all that closely in the UK late last year. Then again, I used Apple Pay for almost everything; the hotels were some of the only places that needed the physical card.

Actually, I think a lot of smaller merchants might never get rid of the requirement (or will take an extremely long time to do so) simply because they don't trust that they won't get screwed over by chargebacks. Not that collecting signatures will necessarily help with that, mind you, since I'm not sure they'll even be considered proof anymore.

The major networks have mandated that every terminal in Europe support contactless/NFC payment by 2020 (?). In fact, I suspect the vast majority are already there if my recent UK experience is any indication.

Honestly, I almost feel as though NFC is wasted on the US and that we shouldn't have gotten Apple Pay, etc. anywhere near first. Then again, most merchants would have purchased chip-enabled terminals without the hardware at all if Apple wasn't there to push things along.

I'd be careful with generalizations like that. Mexico, for example, is still predominantly chip and signature (though some debit cards are beginning to require PIN now).

Contactless cards are extremely uncommon in the US since the banks have decided to discontinue/skip over them in favor of mobile wallets. Of course, those aren't doing so well here either for various reasons, which may partly explain the various measures the networks are taking now to make chip and signature/nothing "faster" (such as allowing insert/removal before the total's known).

Which won't happen unless it's federally mandated. (Long story, but it would actually be a significant hassle for possibly little reward. Especially since a lot of merchants have taken their cue from the banks and installed equipment incapable of accepting PINs.)

Palal

Apple slowed things down in the US. Back in 2012 they were the last to the NFC game. While Samsung and Google have been pushing this one, Apple has dragged its feet on this.
Honestly, the US should have just jumped over the chips and straight to NFC (+pin?)

tmiw

Other companies might have been pushing it but it's all pointless if merchants won't play along. While that part's gotten better, a significant minority will likely never bother with NFC (or at least won't until customers start demanding it far more than they currently are). Not to mention that for many of those merchants, NFC actually requires significant software development on top of whatever's been done for chip since they refuse to use any bank/processor-written software on their terminals.

Also, customers aren't really going to start demanding it in large numbers for a while due to our general extreme distrust of banking technology. (I suspect that's what killed contactless cards here, since they were around back in 2007-2010 or so; the only reason NFC wasn't immediately dismissed this time, IMO, is because authentication is basically mandatory with the phone-based systems.) The question then becomes: how long will the banks wait before concluding that NFC is a success or a failure?

On that note, I'm honestly surprised that the US isn't a predominantly cash-based country like Japan or Germany, though I guess banks did condition us to use cards over a span of decades.

Palal

If you notice, most CC processing terminals are bank terminals and not POS terminals in Europe. Very few are fully integrated.

On that note, I'm honestly surprised that the US isn't a predominantly cash-based country like Japan or Germany, though I guess banks did condition us to use cards over a span of decades.[/QUOTE]
What? And give up on the possibility of constantly living in debt?

tmiw

Even the PIN pads tend to have bank/processor branding on them elsewhere (what's known as "semi-integration", where the POS only really sends the amount and gets back approved/declined). The US is really one of the only places to have the POS handle a large part of the transaction.

In any event, if people were less resistant to the idea of mobile wallets, you'd see Samsung Pay (which works with almost all terminals, not just the NFC enabled ones) get a lot more use than the others. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be getting used much more than the others from what I can tell.

That would probably be a good thing society-wise, but that's a different topic for a different thread.

dulciusexasperis

The bottom line remains simple. The USA is behind the rest of the world when it comes to card technology. Chip and PIN is superior to anything else at the moment in terms of security and yet the majority of US banks continue to refuse to make it available.

From my perspective, anyone who wants to use a card from a US bank, should only use one that is true Chip and PIN. This applies to BOTH debit and credit cards. Vote with your feet and the banks will have to change their answer.

It is fine to say that if there is a fraudulent transaction, you are not liable, the bank or the merchant is, so you have nothing to lose and increased security has little value to you individually. But that is a short sighted view. When you see fraudulent transactions appear on your card statements, that's when you will discover what it can really mean in terms of time and hassle to get it corrected.

Again from my perspective, it seems like simple common sense to want a Chip and PIN card for the increased security it provides. When reading some comments, all I can see is an apparent acceptance of 'this is how it is' without questioning why it is as it is when the rest of the world has more secure cards than you do. Why would you settle for an inferior product?

tmiw

The current minimum world standard is EMV, which the US now (mostly) uses. The cardholder authentication method used is a completely different discussion.

Better than signature or nothing? Sure, but it's possible to screw up PIN too--for instance, by using 1234. Not to mention that it's fairly trivial to grab PINs from ATMs.

Also, biometric cards are supposedly better security-wise, but the jury's out on those.

I have the Diners Club Mastercard and I can tell you that PIN is actually a huge hassle in the US with smaller merchants and restaurants. Many times they assume it's a debit card and try to run it "as credit" only to have the card decline. In fact, a few places have flat out refused to allow me to enter it and demanded an alternate form of payment.

Sure, these issues might diminish if more people used such cards. But when they're only available from a few semi-obscure credit unions, people aren't going to bother going through the trouble unless they absolutely felt like they needed to. And frankly, chip and signature works fine overseas for the most part, even if you have your transactions scrutinized more than usual. For the rest (mostly unattended terminals that don't work with signature-only cards), there are cards like the ones Barclays offers that do have PINs for that purpose.

I've had fraudulent transactions before. It was literally a single phone call to get the card replaced and the transactions removed.

Would I have preferred to not have made that call in the first place? Sure. It's not a huge time sink like you claim, though, except perhaps across the entire US population.

For me, it's not settling so much as acknowledging reality. A lot of other countries are moving on from using the chip towards tapping their cards or mobile devices; Australia, for example, does so for 92% of their card transactions. There may soon come a time, if it hasn't come already, where inserting a card at all annoys the sales clerk and the people behind you in line--even if you don't have to sign for the purchase.

Adopting PIN also has implications for certain transactions. For instance, Americans generally seem to dislike pay at the table as done in other countries; restaurants would either need to wholesale switch to a pay at the front model (which is currently seen as something lower-end restaurants do) or adopt stuff like this (which is a massive investment that only large chains seem to be willing to do).

Considering the above, it's no surprise that we're doing the minimum required to a) fix a large proportion of the fraud problem (which is counterfeit cards, not lost or stolen cards) and b) provide a foundation to jump to what's becoming the new standard.