Wait wut?

First my cheques are free, and the only time I really use them is when somebody needs by account info on file.

Second I have a chip card and I hate it.

Third, you're right. US telecom blows.

Fourth I hate to break it to you but talent really does flock to the US from europe and elsewhere and many of our greatest scientists and entrepreneurs are from abroad. Hell, Elon Musk is South African. That is the result of an extremely innovation friendly investment community, and the best higher education (UK is a distant second), in the world.

>> Second I have a chip card and I hate it."

Why? A bit more info would be useful.

Probably because it's slightly slower to use than magnetic strips (at least in the US), and since we're in a transition period you kind of never know whether a given store supports chip inserts.

Good points but that's not really a problem with the chip and pin tech. The parents comments sounded like he had a specific issue with that. Regarding speed I'm not too familiar with magnetic strip cards but don't you have to sign the receipt? If so that seems like it would take as long as entering a PIN. Also, do magnetic strips support contactless payments? The chip and PIN cards in the UK do which makes payments almost instant (up to £30).

We didn't do Chip+PIN in the US, we did Chip+Sign for everything but debit cards (which still use signatures in most cases as a lot of stores don't have support for the US Common Debit AID, yet). No, virtually nobody supports contactless on cards themselves, if you want that you're stuck with Apple Pay / Android Pay / Microsoft Wallet and having to use your phone or watch.

Our EMV rollout in the US was awful, the software running on card terminals is abysmally slow to authenticate transactions (taking upwards of 15 seconds in some cases), while traditional magnetic strips took maybe 2 or 3 to authorize. This is fixable, and multiple vendors in the chain have been providing fixes that drop the authentication+authorization time back down to the 3 second window, but it's going to take a while for it to get rolled out now that it's almost a full year after the big switch.

That sounds pretty terrible. In terms to auth speed we get that occasionally in very small stores (newsagents) but when you have to type in your PIN most stores handle it all in a few seconds now. The 15 second auth time was common here until about 5 years ago. In the last year I've also seen massive improvements, largely due to stores upgrading terminals to support contactless payments which I use almost everywhere now. I regularly leave home without my wallet as I can be quite certain I'll be able to use Apple Pay via the contactless terminal.

With a magnetic strip you swipe and put it in your pocket. You can even do that while the cashier is scanning your items - meaning it doesn't cost you any time at all.

With chip you have to put it in the machine and leave it there until the transaction is finished, including signing. Only then can you take it out, exactly at the moment when you should be grabbing your bags.

It's much slower.

They don't work everywhere (just give 'declined' when swiped which can be embarrassing) and they're definitely slower, as they contact the mother ship on every transaction.

Everybody in the comments correctly guessed my gripes. My least favorite thing is that I can't swipe if there is an option to use the chip.

> People in the US still use cheques. And they have to pay (a lot) to print those. Chip cards? No, let's use our fraud-prone magnetic stripe cards.

There's a fascinating lack of awareness here. These are examples of Americans forced into sub-standard technology by government overregulation. At least the chip cards are being fixed.

<rant> Checks are the most annoying part of paying my rent in the US. In Europe it was just a few clicks online. Here it sometimes takes two weeks until the landlord clears the check. </rant>

So glad my landlord is awesome, she banks with Chase, I bank with Wells Fargo - since both banks support clearXchange under their own brand (Chase QuickPay, Wells Fargo SurePay) I can just send my rent payment to her email address through online banking and it is in her account within 2 days, makes life easy for me and she loves not needing to wait for a check in the mail or having to cash it.

Even that is slow I really don't get why banks are allowed to keep your money for 2 days for online payments. Here I transfer money it is in the other persons account in a few min.

Dwolla!

About chip cards: Do you know why the US hasn't cared much about chip cards? The fraud rate is low enough that credit card companies don't need to push it. Chip+pin or chip+sign slows down the process and adds extra barriers to payments.

Plus, you (as a consumer) are only liable for up to $50 of fraudulent charges in the US (it's higher if you are slow to report). But most credit card companies don't make you pay anything when fraud happens.

So until the Target hack happened, there wasn't any motivation for anyone in the payment stack (from consumers to card networks) to move to different tech.

To me Chip cards are a much bigger issue for debit cards. I have fraud protection on my bank account, but it can still take the bank up to a month or more if they want before putting stolen money back in my account. Once everyone rolls out EMV-enabled ATM's and POS terminals someone can steal my magstripe data all they want, they won't be able to draw money from my checking account. Of course, this is why I use credit cards for 99% of my purchases, and I typically go into a branch if I need to withdraw money (assuming they are open), but it's a really annoying threat to have to be on the lookout for.

> People in the US still use cheques. And they have to pay (a lot) to print those.

US citizen, and I haven't used a single cheque in over a decade.

The actual costs of printing cheque are negligible, and every bank and CU I've used gives them to customers for free.

Printing is cheap, but processing the cheques at the other end is expensive; about 70 cents each and that was with a system that scanned them at point of receipt and converted it to ACH.

>Oh you're so funny. As opposed to the US where people overpay for sub-standard local technology?

That's so cute. Does your high income tax pay for all of that above standard local technology?

>People in the US still use cheques. And they have to pay (a lot) to print those.

Anecdotal, but I've rarely seen anyone pay by cheque.

>Chip cards? No, let's use our fraud-prone magnetic stripe cards.

Yes, because chip cards are so infallible.

>It's cheaper for me to call the US using an MVNO from Europe than picking up a phone and calling the US from within with a pre-paid cell phone there.

Surprising. Care to list some prices?

> Does your high income tax pay for all of that above standard local technology?

GSM is an example.

My beef with cheques is not that they are barely used, but that they're the only solution sometimes, like some B2B payments, or high ticket purchases.

And I pay 1c per minute + .15c for a call to the US. And 5€ per month gets me 5Gb

...and at the end of the day it still doesn't produce Google scale companies.