There is none. Is that not possible? Some of the problem with line holdups is the people do not know how to work the machines. Home Depot has a GIGANTIC SREEEN large enough to view movies, while others are tiny. If an item will not scan at Sams you can select from pictures. Is the business that competitive??

My blood pressure spikes drastically when the tiny screen says "Chip Malfunction". But the damn chip worked great 10 minutes ago at the gas station!

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
My blood pressure spikes drastically when the tiny screen says "Chip Malfunction". But the damn chip worked great 10 minutes ago at the gas station!

Every time, almost, at Walmart.
Some incompatibility between their chip reader & Chase cards.

Chip fail 3 times, then you can swipe & it might go through.

quote:

My blood pressure spikes drastically when the tiny screen says "Chip Malfunction".

Sometimes, I swear, before the card is even fully inserted.

I have one card that can simply be tapped, but not all terminals allow that either.

Not every retailer can afford to roll out the latest greatest bestest terminal. And many times there is a cost to running multiple systems. The cost to update the “back office” systems maybe many times the cost of new terminals at the front of the store. And yes the market is hyper competitive, revenue from any given transaction is measured in pennies per transaction and from that you have to make a profit. Not to mention the constant upgrade merry go round means you can not count on a return on investment past a few years. And do you really need a terminal with a large display at say a gas pump? Or at a store with a large display at the point of sale system? What about a vending machine? Should ATMs have the same system? Heck you can pay for Girl Scout cookies many times with a reader attached to a cell phone.

Just because I carry a striker fired pistol does not mean I got rid of my DAO pistol or revolver.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
My blood pressure spikes drastically when the tiny screen says "Chip Malfunction". But the damn chip worked great 10 minutes ago at the gas station!

I have a debit card that will give that message if you apply any kind of lateral pressure on the card.

I know that in ATMs it's the customer who sets the specs for the machine that they install (former NCR tech on the financial team). I have no idea how the retail side works, but I imagine the process is pretty similar.

The US has failed to standardize. The chipped card to me make no sense because there is no pin code.

I have a business credit card for travel (mostly international for me) and it has a 4 digit pin. I have to enter the pin in SOME terminals but not all. If it doesn't work, it can be swiped. So what is the point of a secure chip and pin card if it can be swiped too?

Most of my cards have the "tap" capability but I never use it. I have an Apple MasterCard set up in Apple Pay, which I can use at Meijer and Walgreens, but not at Kroeger. Hard to keep track of what works where.

On the other hand, China has a single pay system - Union Pay - which uses a chip and 6 digit PIN. No signatures, and you need the card and the PIN every time. My business card will not work in a Union Pay only terminal which means most local restaurants and businesses I have to pay cash. Hotels and restaurants in major cities that cater to westerners are generally OK though.

But most everyone now uses one of two electronic payment systems. WeChat Pay or Alipay. You put money in your phone with a linked bank or credit card, then pay by scanning a QR code. A friend of mine paid the bill in a restaurant by scanning the QR code on the corner of the table - no check, no wait, no giving money or card to the server and waiting for them to return.

BUT, that is how a single party totalitarian country works. They pick a system and go with it. The move to electronic pay and the inability of some places to even accept cash is all the better to monitor everything you spend.

We have the opposite - different systems all competing with each other, some of which work well together, some of which do not.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
The US has failed to standardize. The chipped card to me make no sense because there is no pin code.

Not confident that would help a lot. Many CC thefts involve compromised PoS (Point of Sale) terminals. (Aka: CC readers/swipers.) They collect the CC info when the card is inserted/swiped. They'd snag the PIN, too.

That's what makes Apple Pay such a good alternative. PoS terminals never see the actual CC number.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
The US has failed to standardize. The chipped card to me make no sense because there is no pin code.

Not confident that would help a lot. Many CC thefts involve compromised PoS (Point of Sale) terminals. (Aka: CC readers/swipers.) They collect the CC info when the card is inserted/swiped. They'd snag the PIN, too.

That's what makes Apple Pay such a good alternative. PoS terminals never see the actual CC number.

I'm a fan of Apple Pay.

Why do some gas stations now ask for a PIN with a credit card? I’ve found a couple that don’t give the option to bypass PIN so I just left and went to next gas station but it’s crazy aggravating.

Does your CC have a PIN?

Another Card Reader Fun Fact: Since the WhooHooFloo has made me hyper aware of germy nasties, I have looked closely at the card reader devices. Might as well stick your hand in the crapper!
What really was ridiculous was some places put a flexible clear cover over the keypad and claimed they were hosing it off after every modern day Typhoid Mary touched it. So I would watch to see if the disinfectant protocol was being done. Nope. Not once! Its amazing I am still alive!

I imagine they do have standards; otherwise, they'd have different machines for Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. As someone pointed out, replacing credit card terminals probably costs a lot of money so there's a lag between getting the latest and greatest machine. It's probably more a question of whether they have to because it's not like new credit card machines will up their sales. It's always about minimizing costs so it's the cost of crappy old machines breaking down, slowing things down, etc. versus the costs of new machines.

I remember there was a lag from the swipe machines to the chip machines. Even now, the machines still have the swipe features and I doubt if any credit cards don't have the chip feature. But I think most card machines and credit cards still have both the magnetic strip and the chip even as the contactless feature has been rolled out for quite some time now.

Cash is King. I think I'm the only employee that did not have
Direct deposit. Paper check. I go to the bank every two weeks,
I go in and see the same sweet ladies I've known for thirty years.
Debit cards are stupid. I've never paid for a meal or gasoline
with a credit card. Never had a card compromised. Amazon and a few
of my hobby websites have only seen my card.

quote:

Originally posted by Flash-LB:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
That's what makes Apple Pay such a good alternative. PoS terminals never see the actual CC number.

I'm a fan of Apple Pay.

Apple Pay is my goto. I actually choose vendors just because they honor Apple Pay. Our Safeway takes it, which is where I do most of my local shopping. The gas station will, but not at the pump. I would have to hobble into the store twice to complete the transaction, which is not worth it for me. For gas, I just use another cheaper station that at least uses chip reading terminals at the pump.

quote:

Originally posted by Flash-LB:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
The US has failed to standardize. The chipped card to me make no sense because there is no pin code.

Not confident that would help a lot. Many CC thefts involve compromised PoS (Point of Sale) terminals. (Aka: CC readers/swipers.) They collect the CC info when the card is inserted/swiped. They'd snag the PIN, too.

That's what makes Apple Pay such a good alternative. PoS terminals never see the actual CC number.

I'm a fan of Apple Pay.

Same issue, not all CC readers are equipped to handled Apple Pay, Google Pay, RFID pay...

I've run across readers at gas pumps that have the appropriate setup to take Apple Pay but they don't work. Being that a lot of CC's are skimmed at gas pumps, prefer the apple pay process myself...

Looking back at the OP, I notice and feel the need to point out that there's a difference between the credit card reader and the point of sale system. You mentioned Home Depot self checkout (SCO). The SCO is the register and the card reader together - the actual card reader is the small box to the side of the SCO, and HD uses something that's nowhere near the latest and greatest.

When I was in Norway a decade ago, they had chip and pin for everything. We had only mag stripe, and often the retailer had to use a separate card machine for us. Got quite frustrating after a bit.

My second trip to Norway a few years later, and finally had a chip card myself. Needed to set up a PIN for international travel, but wow was it so much smoother.

The other thing I liked about Norway's setup is that all the servers had their own readers, and would hand it to you at the table. They never took your card, unlike here where they place everything in the folder and take it from you out of sight.

All that said, I'm a big fan of the tap option now. I do wish more places had it though.

Not making any judgements here, but just to give you folks a little different perspective: I just purchased three new card terminals for a small business about a month ago. We had to buy through our card processor from the list of models that they supported. That wasn't really a big deal and the pricing was competitive with just going out and buying one from a random online vendor. We bought what was probably the least expensive model they have, and they were about $500/ea. You can easily go over $1k/ea. if you want the big, fancy video screens or highly integrated stuff. The ones we got are basically a cheap android cellphone with a receipt printer stuck to the back.

NFC tech is now in all of the models we could have bought, meaning we can support card taps and stuff like Apple Pay. However, when it comes to Apple Pay and things like it, we are limited to what the processor supports, not what the machine supports. Our processor will do Apple Pay, but I don't think they do PayPal or any of the bleeding-edge crypto payment stuff. Not sure if they do Google pay, but we don't get nearly as many people asking about that as we do Apple Pay at our particular site. We do have the option of saying that we do NOT want to accept certain types of payments, but the processor controls the list we get to pick from, and their list is smaller than what the machine could handle.

Our biggest problem was that we wanted a unit with a built-in receipt printer. There was only one model that had that feature anymore. Otherwise, we would have had to buy a separate printer, and it wasn't clear if it would hook straight to the reader or if we would have to route the printing through our POS system, which could have been a problem. We didn't want to risk having to replace the whole POS system just to keep printing credit card receipts.

Another problem that we run into once or twice a year is the internet and phones going out. Mice like to get into our pedestal and chew up the phone wires to make space for their nest, which kills the DSL and the phones. For these instances, we keep an old slide-style manual receipt machine and a stack of carbon-copy receipts around. You know, the old machines where you put the card in, place the receipt paper on top, and do the chunk-chunk with the swiper to transfer the raised numbers on the card onto the receipt? Well, that doesn't work well anymore because more and more cards don't have the raised numbers that the machine needs to transfer the number. So, we end up having to write down card numbers and enter them manually, if people can't pay with cash...which they often can't. We could buy a more expensive machine that supports cellular data, but just like a cellphone, we would have to buy a monthly plan for it, even if the cell was just a backup.

Lastly, we semi-regularly get forced to upgrade our card readers by the payment processor. In general, we upgrade because they make us, not because we have any problems with our terminals. The three terminals I just bought were purchased because the processor told me they weren't supporting our existing devices anymore. My guess is that they are moving to a newer comm protocol that is more secure or faster or something, but they don't really tell us. They just say our existing readers will stop working on X date and to get new ones by then. I'm sure they would offer an explanation if I asked, but I wasn't interested enough to ask. This usually only happens once every three to five years so I've never worried about it. If they started making me buy new readers every year it would be a different story.

Anyway, just wanted to pass along some of my experiences from the small business side of things.

- Bret

quote:

Originally posted by sadlerbw:
Our biggest problem was that we wanted a unit with a built-in receipt printer.

Not questioning your desire for that feature, but I don't even request receipts, anymore, when I'm purchasing consumables with Apple Pay. I get a "card reciept" on my phone and watch. It/they is/are consumable(s), so I won't need it for warranty purposes

quote:

Originally posted by sadlerbw:
Another problem that we run into once or twice a year is the internet and phones going out.

Can't speak to the phones. Don't know what you have for phone service, but...

Here at casa ensigmatic our Internet connection is backed-up with an LTE automatic fail-over connection. Comcast goes out (very, very rarely happens, and almost never for long) and the Internet router automatically switches the Internet connection to the LTE modem (on T-Mobile).

Internet connection comes back: Router automatically switches the Internet connection back.

It's so seamless we've actually been streaming NetFlix or whatever and the only reason I knew it had happened was the router sends me email notifications.

Since our "landline" is on VoIP: It gets the same backup.

Don't know what you have available there for Internet and wireless services, but maybe something to consider if your Internet connection is critical to your business.

My first job required that I get the slider machine from under the counter, put in the card, put in a CC slip with carbon paper, and "cha-chunk" across the card. Then we deposited those slips with the nightly bank deposit. No upgrades necessary to the machine, and they were all standard. Probably had Milli Vanilli "Blame it on the Rain" or some such on the Muzak.