Re:Why You Still Can’t Use a Chip Card Everywhere
by Symbiote on Monday July 25, 2016 @06:21AM
(#12157668)
If your transactions take 20-30 seconds, something is badly wrong with the communications infrastructure in the shops you are using.
In Europe, from pressing "OK" after typing in a PIN, it takes about 2-5 seconds before the card can be withdrawn.
Re:Why You Still Can’t Use a Chip Card Everywhere
by wichert on Monday July 25, 2016 @07:57AM
(#12158027)
For larger stores which have a basic always-on internet connection it will be much faster. In my experience 2-5 seconds is what you see for mobile devices that use 2G or 3G, or places that still use some form of dial-up for every transaction (ISDN still exists..).
Re:Why You Still Can’t Use a Chip Card Everywhere
by PeterisP on Monday July 25, 2016 @07:12AM
(#12157831)
Had some practical experience with chip&PIN terminal debuginfo. For that particular hardware, transactions took something like 0.3 seconds to negotiate with the chip, 1.5-2 seconds to make the online part of transaction (most of it to establish a cellular data connection and the ssl handshake, the device had only 2G cell chip so very slow data :-/) but it all was dwarfed by the time needed to physically print the required receipt & confirmation; even we could make the transaction processing instant, it would be just a 25% improvement because of the printing speed.
This article seems to have ignored the real reason why the US opted for "chip and sign" instead of "chip and pin". The thinking was that if Americans had to remember a PIN for all of their credit cards they would likely narrow their credit card usage to a single card - the one they memorized the PIN for rather than using one of the 3 or 4 other cards they posses.
And I just had to laugh at this:
“Consumers may think that it feels a little bit longer because the card is in the terminal the whole time instead of just swiping it and sticking it right back in your wallet,” said Stephanie Ericksen, Visa’s vice president of risk products. “But the actual transaction itself is taking the same amount of time. It’s just that you’re watching your card be there while the information is going out and coming back.”
Total BS. The actual "transaction time is on the order of milliseconds , the time spent waiting for those milliseconds is closer to 20 to 30 seconds.