from Hacker News

EMV and Chip cards

by excid3 on 7/30/14, 1:36 PM with 51 comments

  • by pzb on 7/30/14, 2:11 PM

    This is a great move to help reduce fraud for their US merchants, but even more important is it expands their potential market. Adding a chip reader opens up the rest of the world.

    However, I'm still not sure how they will handle the PIN part of Chip and PIN, as the usual requirement is that the PIN is entered on a dedicated Pin Entry Device which then only presents the unlocked smart card to the merchant register.

  • by wwarren on 7/30/14, 1:47 PM

    As a british immigrant to North America, I couldn't believe how far behind in this regard the States and Canada were. Canada has since caught up, but the US is only now getting there.

    Anecdotal story: the only time my credit card has been defrauded is after a 3 day stay in the USA

  • by brotchie on 7/30/14, 2:11 PM

    I wonder what their plans are for NFC / PayPass / PayWave? Are there technological barriers to it? Could a NFC enabled Smartphone act as a payment terminal?

    It's only on rare occasions now that I have to even put in a pin (in Australia), NFC style payment terminals are pretty much ubiquitous.

    NFC payments in 80-90% of stores, many parking machines, >50% of vending machines.

  • by sisk on 7/30/14, 3:00 PM

    A couple of data points:

    American Express sent me a new card—unprovoked—about two months ago that is chipped. As mentioned elsewhere, it is a chip and signature card (as opposed to a chip and pin). I'm nothing particularly special as a credit card user so, if I received a card, seems the roll out has already well underway.

    Another point is, as mentioned elsewhere, PayPal already offers a chip and pin compatible bluetooth device in a few countries marketed as part of their PayPal Here brand[0].

    [0] - https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/how-to-use-paypal-here

  • by unwiredben on 7/30/14, 2:42 PM

    It looks like they're not able to power strictly off the audio jack anymore with this tech. The product brief indicates that it uses a MicroUSB charging connector. I wonder how many transactions a single charge can handle.

  • by prattbhatt on 7/30/14, 2:26 PM

    Seems they want to sell the EMV card readers instead of providing them for free.

  • by stuaxo on 7/30/14, 2:26 PM

    Can't imagine not using these ... the only problem is the cards are weaker and the chip starts to come out.

    (Only if you don't use a wallet)...

  • by foobarqux on 7/30/14, 2:11 PM

    And still no NFC.

  • by powertower on 7/30/14, 2:36 PM

    After reading the wikipedia article on this, these cards seems to be full of fallback mechanisms that make them virtually useless for more advanced protection but in only a few constrained situations, and it's biggest benefit is that it allows MasterCard and the others to shift liability of fraud from the Bank to the merchant and the customer.