>Interesting, is this some US thing? Because in Europe for VISA/Mastercard payments I'm quite sure the name of the card owner is never transmitted to the vendor
I was surprised too but apparently it's a field that exists on the magstripe itself. Presumably something similar exists on EMV (for chip/contactless) as well.
Payments with the magnetic stripe is something that’s long gone in Europe. More than 20 years. Some devices may still support it (for US tourists), but I haven’t seen anyone using it for over a decade.
I doubt that the number and the name can be read via EMC. Otherwise you could easily read strangers name in the subway by just holding your NFC Android phone close to their wallet. And HN would be full with such stories :)
I double-checked with an EMV reader app on my phone and yeah, it's not there. The fields/separators are there, but my "name" is a zero length string.
Just out of curiosity, is the card number or the expiration date there?
both
I actually have been to a gas station in france a few years ago (like in the late 2010s) whose terminal only accepted magnetic stripe. I was extremely surprised, i really thought they didn't exist anymore
Late 2010s sounds about right, the EU directive PSD2 became effective by September 2019, which banned most of those machines accepting payment without a PIN or magnetic stripe. There might have been some extended timelines in some member countries and also some providers that just didn't implement it in time (and might had to pay a fine).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Services_Directive#Rev...
Ah, memories of a "cool trick" we did in the late '80s: overwrite your name on the magstripe, so when you go to an ATM with your friends, you can show them that the machine greeted you with "HELLO MASTER!". Oh, the joys of unencrypted info in pure ASCII...
Also it's a risk for stolen credit card information. I think the vendor doesn't even get the credit card number when processing a payment, otherwise shop clerks could just take screenshots and abuse a credit card for online shopping.