Yes indeed, I don't really get this post, it takes around 2 seconds to validate the transaction, is that slow? And you have contactless for small amounts as well which is instant.
Chip readers were incredibly slow when they were first rolled out in Europe, too. Stores would tape over the chip slot and put on a note saying "Wipe instead".
Maybe I'm just showing my age here, but if it were a hardware problem, it seems weird that the US would still have the launch woes Europe had over ten years ago.
I work near a Chase building which has a cafeteria in the basement open to everyone. Every checkout register there still hasn't moved their readers to chip transactions. They have 40+ floors of Chase above them and this is happening. It's ridiculous and telling of the U.S. chip reader rollout.
I ate there today at lunch. I pulled out my phone to do Apple Pay at the register and... nope not supported either. In the Chicago HQ of Americas #2 retail bank!
The US banks have been talking about "smart cards" and updating payment tech for 25 years, but from what I see they've only been talking...
Stores in the US do that here now. It's also incredibly annoying when it tells you to insert the chip and then decide "oh THAT's how you want to pay? Swipe it instead" after telling you to insert it.
Not to mention that some of the higher-volume corner stores in my area still use the magnetic stripe reader. So the interaction usually has me inserting my card, the cashier noticing, telling me to swipe instead, and going from there.
So unless I'm going to a big retailer (rare) or the stores directly around work/home, the interaction is usually complicated and annoying for human factors layered on top of the complicated, annoying, and insecure chip+sig protocol the banks settled on because chip+pin was too annoying.
> it seems weird that the US would still have the launch woes Europe had over ten years ago
Ha. That doesn't surprise me at all - "It's too hard or expensive for the US to change compared to other nations" is not an uncommon argument for opponents of change.
It used to drive me insane when I first moved here now but is now one of the quirks I love about the US - people aren't Luddites they just really value a national sense of individualism and urge to seek their own solutions!
>Stores would tape over the chip slot and put on a note saying "Wipe instead".
I don't know about the EU, but US stores did this too. It has nothing to do with chip transactions being slow though. My chip card will not work when swiped at a chip-enabled PoS terminal. The issue, in the US at least, is that stores updated the physical terminal before (sometimes long before) enabling chip transactions at the processor level.
