You must be in the US -- America is the only place where mag stripe still exists. Everyone else is using tap or chip and pin.

Do you mean that credit cards in other countries don't have magnetic stripes, or just that nobody uses them?

Living in Canada, there's basically no instance where we'd swipe our credit cards, but they've still got mag stripes; and when I visit the US, I sometimes have to swipe my card, and it does work to do so.

> Do you mean that credit cards in other countries don't have magnetic stripes, or just that nobody uses them?

I don't know about other countries, but a few days ago I got a new Visa card in France. It still has the magnetic stripe. I'm not sure if I've ever seen it used here, but a few years ago I think they were still in use in German gas stations (at least).

Some banks have a nice feature where they allow you to disable the magnetic strip of the card. I presume the information is still physically on the card, but they can somehow know that the payment was done that way and decline it.

I’m in the UK, my cards still have the stripes but in my entire life (I’m 27) I’ve never used it. I don’t even think the card payment terminals we have here have the reader for the stripe anymore.

In Europe, most still have the stripe, but often you can't do magstripe payments unless you enable it beforehand through your bank's app or similar (which is often temporary and disables itself again after 24 hours). I've only ever had to do that when travelling outside of Europe. Most terminals here can't even read the magstripe (and there are even some NFC-only ones).

The card brands are just now beginning the process of phasing out actually putting magstripes on the card. The USA will be a bit later, but over the next few years they’re going to start disappearing from cards.

You're right. Poor choice of words. I seem to recall it's around 2025ish where most cards won't have mag stripes. Mag stripes only exist today because of the US. Everyone else uses the chip for either chip and pin or tap.

To be fair, chips have a similar vulnerability; it's just limited to being exploited immediately rather than being stored and played back later.