Swiping left on magnetic stripes

Why does it take so long? Where’s the bottleneck?<p>Where I lived over the last years (two countries in Europe), I don’t even have to use the physical card. I just use contactless payments with the phone. Prior to that, it was contactless with card. Even ATMs work with contactless (not all, yet). Prior to that, it was chip. I honestly don’t even recall the time when the magnetic stripe was needed.<p>(edit) Think of this: I made an account with one of these neo banks, ordered the card too, and it took me over a year to activate it. I still don’t use it. I just installed the virtual card into the phone’s wallet and used the account like that.

&quot;The magnetic stripe will start to disappear in 2024 from Mastercard payment cards in regions, such as Europe, where chip cards are already widely used. Banks in the U.S. will no longer be required to issue chip cards with a magnetic stripe, starting in 2027.<p>By 2029, no new Mastercard credit or debit cards will be issued with a magnetic stripe. Prepaid cards in the U.S. and Canada are currently exempt from this change.&quot;

If you want to do it faster, you need government regulation. Magnetic stripes have been phased out in the EU for a couple of years. And additionally online card payments all require 2FA in EU.<p>As a result, there&#x27;s barely any credit card fraud in Europe.<p>You can&#x27;t expect the industry to invest in infrastructure if dealing with fraud is cheaper in the short term. You need to force them.

Still a LOT of merchants that need to upgrade equipment to do chip cards including some large franchises. There is a real problem that chip reading devices do not yet have anywhere near the longevity that magswipe use does. Machines go out of service for repair and cleaning after as little as a month of use in busy locations. Magstripe machines typically lasted 12 months plus before needing attention.

I&#x27;ll believe it when I see it. I heard signatures were going away years ago and yet I keep getting asked for signatures.

So most of my current cards (in Europe) have 3 interaction methods:<p>In order of decreasing readability&#x2F;communication reliability:<p>1. Magnetic stripe<p>2. NFC<p>3. EMV<p>The EMV (&quot;chip&quot;) method is the least insecure, but lately all of my cards have been started oxidating. And it seems like the pogo pins in almost all readers also started wearing out too. Chip reader failures have become very common lately.<p>It&#x27;s very common that I have to both clean the card before using it and also bend it while pushing it into the reader to counteract the worn out pogo pins in the in-store reader. Super annoying.<p>NFC has been a saver, but because of the banks security risk (it&#x27;s cleartext, after all) you can&#x27;t really use it all of the time.<p>The magnetic stripe seems like it never seems to stop working. I&#x27;ve assumed I can&#x27;t use it outside of my native country, though, perhaps incorrectly.

Does this mean that we can finally have smaller credit cards, if they only need to be big enough to hold the chip? (Assuming payment slots can somehow handle multiple card sizes, eventually...)

This might sound like a stretch, but I wish I could just pay without having my phone or card or cash or anything else on me. In general I&#x27;m growing weary of authentication hell, but specifically with how it all seems to come back to requiring my phone. I really wouldn&#x27;t mind just keying in my account number and pin to make a payment, but of course that&#x27;s just username + password and I suppose unacceptably risky. The solution I expect is for Amazon to recognized my face and bill me.

I’m from Europe and honestly I’ve never used a magnetic strip to pay with a card. Looks really cool though.

I&#x27;m pretty sure the magstripe is already somewhat disabled over here. My debit mastercard refuses to work outside of the European union unless I disable the geo locking in the banking app, and when my chip was broken the readers kept telling me to put the chip in.

I use my credit card at brick and mortar merchants less and less -- even my local gas station accepts Android&#x2F;Apple Pay (and presumably contactless card taps, but I couldn&#x27;t get it to work with my card). Even the cafe I frequent switched to readers (I think they were Square) associated with an iPad so I add a tip and pay with my phone at the table.<p>But what are they doing to secure online payments? Last time my card number was stolen, all of the fradulent charges were at online merchants.

Haven’t used the magnetic strip in years in Canada.<p>It just isn’t a thing anymore.

My MasterCard even has the raised numbers, and an unfilled spot for my signature. I remember a long time ago, some places still used a manual contraption to impress the digits on carbon copy paper. I wonder why they&#x27;ve retained that unused ability for decades.<p>Not that it matters much. I&#x27;ve made payments with almost 100% Apple Pay for years — a lot of the time I don&#x27;t even carry the physical card with me.

&gt; Prepaid cards in the U.S. and Canada are currently exempt from this change.<p>I&#x27;m telling you all, prepaid cards are a scam. Why? One of the reasons besides massive fees and shady tactics for most are because they&#x27;re so far behind the times. Most don&#x27;t even have a chip for example. Look at a Netspend card (using it as a prime example) and compare it to any bank card today.

Why wouldn’t everywhere be supporting contactless payments by this point?<p>And that’s not me being snippy, because perplexingly, Mariano’s, a grocery store chain in Chicago owned by Kroger’s, does <i>not</i> support NFC payments. (I assume Kroger’s stores proper don’t either.) You have to swipe, use the chip, or use the dedicated Kroger Pay app to scan a QR code to use your digital wallet. <i>(Yes, really. Took them forever to even support chips instead of magstripes.)</i><p>I have absolutely no idea why they do this. Is there a higher interchange fee for contactless? Kroger’s isn’t some mom-and-pop convenience store—they’re the largest supermarket company by revenue.

&gt; By 2033, no Mastercard credit and debit cards will have magnetic stripes<p>I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if, by 2033, people will be identified using biometrics everywhere, so you can pay with your hand print or face scan.

Even in the US, I can&#x27;t remember when I last had to use the magstrip. [1] I could probabbly degauss the magnetic strip and not have any issues. If you have a chip debit card that you never use... it probably isn&#x27;t a bad idea to make the card chip only.<p>What I actually want is a specific bank alert if the card is used without the chip. Currently I just make any transaction over $20 send an email.<p>[1] I guess at resturants where they actually take the card for a minute, I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s chip or magstrip transaction.

I hope that means Home Depot and Target have to accept tap to pay…

In recent years, I&#x27;ve had more transactions using the <i>embossed numbers</i> than I&#x27;ve had using the magnetic stripe. I&#x27;ve had a few taxis in various countries dig out and use one of the slide-across carbon-paper impression machines, once they got through the second or third round of &quot;are you <i>sure</i> you won&#x27;t pay with cash?&quot;. I&#x27;ve had <i>fewer</i> cases of &quot;our chip reader doesn&#x27;t work, please swipe the card instead&quot;.

I sometimes keep my credit card near my iPhone. I have wondered about the impact on credit cards of the new MagSafe magnets in iPhones. I guess if there aren&#x27;t magnetic strips anymore, I won&#x27;t have to worry about it. OTOH, there won&#x27;t be any backup if the chip doesn&#x27;t work, which it doesn&#x27;t always.

One thing I&#x27;ve been curious about is how long have ATMs been using chip readers? Do they use NFC readers now? The ATMs I&#x27;ve used all still pull they card in and dispense it, so you can&#x27;t really see what technology they&#x27;re using internally.

Of the three modes nfc is my favorite, takes less time, but also works less reliably. Chip takes the longest time. And I keep removing it early out of habit. And stripe is the least used. But works the best.

&gt; The arrival of the magnetic stripe changed all that [...] offering more security...<p>Is this what we&#x27;d call security through obscurity? I was under the impression that data on magnetic stripe was not encrypted.

Do they mandate chip + pin yet ? Some years ago I got a Credit Card in the USA with chip but without pin, thus unusable in some places in Europe.

Yea--hooray, it shouid have been done years ago.<p>I would rather see MasterCard lower their fees, and take 100% liability for stolen numbers&#x2F;information.

I&#x27;ve wondered if I shouldn&#x27;t just rip off the magnetic stripe - I never use it, and it&#x27;s just a security risk.

I wonder what the statistics are on gas station pumps in the US for magnetic card versus other methods?

most stores in my town (pop 500, US, mi) still take personal checks. mag reader is needed for fuel pump. a few times needed in store when ship reader wasn&#x27;t working.

What a sad day. Swipes were far more user friendly and the failure rate with reading these chips is unreal.<p>Here&#x27;s to hoping the next &quot;upgrade&quot; isn&#x27;t a nightmare.

I&#x27;d prefer we just phase out MasterCard. I went to a restaurant the other day. QR code on the receipt. Scan that and it opens up Toast. Toast then connects to Apple Pay, which then connects to my credit card. No less than 3 middlemen to pay the restaurant, is absurd.<p>QRCode -&gt; Wallet on my phone holding stablecoin on a L2 like polygon (which is collecting APY through DeFi) -&gt; Restaurant