Mastercard

[frankly frankie]

It's a "swipe" only, not chip & pin, so that didn't work. I think this year's Christmas booze will be paid for on line.

I haven't seen such a thing in 10 years.  Are you sure it's not a joke?  I mean, is it made of plastic?
Every card I've got (including one pre-loaded one) has been contactless for the last 3 years.  Did you try just waving it airily in the general direction of the machine?  (Oh - Waitrose - round my way they haven't gone contactless yet.) (Oh - Lagavulin - probably not under £30 ...)

[Dibdib]

swipe-only cards should still work in most, if not all, card terminals - even if the yoof behind the counter hasn't been trained how to use it. In fact I saw exactly this the other day in the little Co-Op by me, complete with a manager having to show the lad how to do it.

[Wowbagger]

The checkout staff are trained not to accept anything other than chip & pin cards. They simply wouldn't let me spend the money. I had to leave the Lagavulin behind and pay cash for the £40ish worth of other shopping.

I had forgotten to take my usual debit cards - an occupational hazard of having to use them in a small machine in order to access internet banking.

[Ham]

If you swipe stuff in the supermarket you will be nicked.

[Wowbagger]

Rejoice! Waitrose's website accepted an on-line order. The Lagavulin was the first item.

[mrcharly-YHT]

That Waitrose are full of moron staff.

My brother and wife's australian cards would not work as chip and pin and had to be swiped. Not a single store in north yorkshire or scotland blinked an eye at coping with swiping a card.

[ian]

They may choose not to accept them – merchant agreements with their banks typically transfer the fraudulent transaction risk to the merchant if chip and pin aren't used. That said, as a serial forgetter of PIN numbers (yeah, yeah, no one cares, number number number) I'm always swiping and signing. I must look honest (which seems doubtful).

The US still doesn't have chip and pin, of course.

[Mr Larrington]

The US still doesn't have chip and pin, of course.

Some bits of Canada do, though.  Picture the confusion when all those refugees from the Untied States of Trumpistan try to buy, well, anything

[davelodwig]

They may choose not to accept them – merchant agreements with their banks typically transfer the fraudulent transaction risk to the merchant if chip and pin aren't used. That said, as a serial forgetter of PIN numbers (yeah, yeah, no one cares, number number number) I'm always swiping and signing. I must look honest (which seems doubtful).

The US still doesn't have chip and pin, of course.

Some bits of the US did when I was there the other week, ok it was in Berkley but some of it did, the other bits had chip and signature.

Though you had to sign on a digitiser.

D.

[ian]

There was much mockery from the Canadians for my US colleagues and their prehistoric manner of paying the bill when I was in Vancouver a few months back. That said, the US mothership corporate Amex do have chips just none of the minions know their PINs or, it seems, the existence thereof of a payment mechanism that would use them. I don't recall getting chip and pinned in NYC either back in August (but someone did attempt to scam my wife's card).

There were introducing it across the Caribbean last week, though with the usual laid back approach that sun and rum ensures.

[MacB]

Some of the US practices are hilariously outdated, I saw a fairly recent example of what they call online banking. You go online and pay your bill via your account, then the bank cuts a cheque and posts it to the person/company indicated.

[Jaded]

I think bobb has it here.

A luxury car is purchased, but with no knowledge of the £500 discount.

It is abundantly clear that the purchase was eminently affordable at the stated price. The £500 is a windfall.

Give it to charity and either

1) keep it quiet and remain smugly inwardly comfortable with that
2) shout about it and show that you are smugly outwardly comfortable with that

or

3) use the money on yourself keep capitalistically quiet about it.

[Oaky]

Give the 500 quid to charity you horrible capitalist.

WWGMD?

(click to show/hide)

What would George Monbiot do? 

[Jaded]

4) give it to Oscar's dad
5) give it to Oscar's dad but realise you'd made a ghastly social faux pas and that you should have given it to Oaky instead.

[jsabine]

6) Buy MOAR LagavulinCaol Ila and Port Ellen, and invite the denizens of YACF round for a sampling session.

[Oscar's dad]

4) give it to Oscar's dad
5) give it to Oscar's dad but realise you'd made a ghastly social faux pas and that you should have given it to Oaky instead.

 

[Moleman76]

The US still doesn't have chip and pin, of course.

I beg to differ.  Any new card I've been issued in the last year has been chip - and - magnetic stripe.
Many merchants have "no chip yet" signs on their combination readers.

While it's pushed out here as a security thing, I do wonder how it improves security.  With 2 or 3 cards regularly used in our household, we are issued replacement ones about every 6 months because some merchant's database of charge records has been hacked yet again, and several gazillion accounts compromised.  Seems to happen more from on-line purchases than from in-store ones.  And, yes, we've been through one round of chip-equipped cards being reissued.

Personally, I prefer swiping cards.  Much faster.

[mrcharly-YHT]

The US still doesn't have chip and pin, of course.

I beg to differ.  Any new card I've been issued in the last year has been chip - and - magnetic stripe.
Many merchants have "no chip yet" signs on their combination readers.

While it's pushed out here as a security thing, I do wonder how it improves security.  With 2 or 3 cards regularly used in our household, we are issued replacement ones about every 6 months because some merchant's database of charge records has been hacked yet again, and several gazillion accounts compromised.  Seems to happen more from on-line purchases than from in-store ones.  And, yes, we've been through one round of chip-equipped cards being reissued.

Personally, I prefer swiping cards.  Much faster.

Even if a some hacker gets all the charge records, that doesn't compromise the security of using your chip and pin card. It just compromises security of using card for online purchases, and not even then if they use the '3D' system where the purchase is verified by your bank.

The insecure payments are the ones where you just hand over card details over a phone - I had to do that with a taxi firm 3 times last week, makes my hackles rise. Truly wish that it became a thing of the past.

[davelodwig]

The US still doesn't have chip and pin, of course.

I beg to differ.  Any new card I've been issued in the last year has been chip - and - magnetic stripe.
Many merchants have "no chip yet" signs on their combination readers.

While it's pushed out here as a security thing, I do wonder how it improves security.  With 2 or 3 cards regularly used in our household, we are issued replacement ones about every 6 months because some merchant's database of charge records has been hacked yet again, and several gazillion accounts compromised.  Seems to happen more from on-line purchases than from in-store ones.  And, yes, we've been through one round of chip-equipped cards being reissued.

Personally, I prefer swiping cards.  Much faster.

Even if a some hacker gets all the charge records, that doesn't compromise the security of using your chip and pin card. It just compromises security of using card for online purchases, and not even then if they use the '3D' system where the purchase is verified by your bank.

The insecure payments are the ones where you just hand over card details over a phone - I had to do that with a taxi firm 3 times last week, makes my hackles rise. Truly wish that it became a thing of the past.

Given it's the capitalist centre of the world (often it seems anyway) the US's approach to payments seems often a bit pants.

All the times I used my card, they had pretty much handed it back before I'd signed not even checking they matched. When I worked in retail pre chip and pin we had it drummed into us to check the signatures match. The pin is supposed to remove the randomness of checking the sig as the computer does the check and tells the vendor yes or no.

Over here the banks insist on 3d secure for online processing to ensure the card details are held by the owner.

For such a modern country they are behind the times dramactically in terms of transaction security, I guess a lot of folks just use cash.

And no contactless, fer gods sake.

[ian]

I don't think I've ever seen them check a signature in US. Normally it's just a case of signing and leaving on the table for the waitbot to collect. After they've first wandered off with your card for a while. It's hilariously insecure. I think every fraud issue I've had with my cards has originated in the US.

The US has a defiant love of old school paperwork. Stuff that gets signed, documents in triplicate, that kind of thing. Every proper American loves their shoe box of receipts. Filing online is still a bit socialist.

US cards may be routinely chipped now (my Fleet Bank one isn't, mind) but I don't think anyone told them about PINs, so it's evidently being introduced by stealth, probably to avoid accusations of Global World Government collusion.

[Mr Larrington]

As a significant contributor to the USAnian economy in the form of buying lots and lots of "gas", the sooner they do away with those petrol pumps that don't recognise the existence of The Rest of the World and ask me for a "ZIP code" (whatever that might be) before rejecting my card the happier I shall be.

My chum Dr Reichert says that if you enter the numerical part of your postcode followed by two zeros they work.  This may work for Canuckistani postcodes but is Not True for BRITISH ones chiz.

[Kim]

While it's pushed out here as a security thing, I do wonder how it improves security.

It improves security by making the customer liable.

[frankly frankie]

And no contactless, fer gods sake.

Why not?

Although I must say, I have about 6 contactless cards plus a bus pass (also contactless) all jammed together in a mini-wallet, and every time I walk through a supermarket entrance (in or out) the alarm goes off and (about 1 time in 6) I get chased by a security person.

[Moleman76]

Every proper American loves their shoe box of receipts.

Ms. Molewoman is exceedingly proper by those standards.  Having once worked for a business which went through a tax audit, she makes sure we have receipts from before 1980 by the filing-cabinet worth.  I've given up on suggesting they be disposed of.

More and more merchants have enacted upper limits for signature-free purchases.  What one doesn't know is why it is $25 at one store, $50 at another ...

[contango]

They may choose not to accept them – merchant agreements with their banks typically transfer the fraudulent transaction risk to the merchant if chip and pin aren't used. That said, as a serial forgetter of PIN numbers (yeah, yeah, no one cares, number number number) I'm always swiping and signing. I must look honest (which seems doubtful).

The US still doesn't have chip and pin, of course.

My understanding was that if the card has a chip and the store chooses to allow the customer to swipe then the fraud liability shifts to the store. Of course the store training procedures probably don't bother getting into that level of complexity as it's easier to just say no.