Major retailers track auth processing on the order of milliseconds. Online retailers track them down to tens of microseconds. Most acquirers commit to no more than a 2 second response. Varying from this regularly by 100 milliseconds is a three-alarm emergency. These retailers call them on the carpet when they see this. It's considered 'friction', and they want 'frictionless' transactions. Once you click 'buy', they want this to happen fast fast fast.

In the old days, sonny, a 10 second auth was the goal when your terminal DIALED UP THE AUTH SYSTEM THROUGH A MODEM. USR made a killing selling Total Control model pools with a special warble that would train the terminal modem in 3 seconds. Every other modem struggled to train up a 110 baud connection in 3-6 seconds. With a TC hub, you could hope for a 6 second auth.

If you're waiting more than 6 seconds to see 'APPROVED' on the terminal screen, something is not working as it should. Most likely the retailer.

If I intend to use my Softcard, I've opened it, entered my PIN, and put it back in my pocket on the way into the store, or while I'm in line.

This is not so hard.

Let them print your check for you and it won't be 2 minutes.

Even well skilled cashiers take time to gather change out of the drawer. I suspect if you studied this as closely as retailers do, you'd be disappointed. Cash is not automatically faster.

I use Softcard at least once a day. Six seconds to complete the transaction. It takes the cashier longer to open the drawer, put the dollar and three dimes in the drawer and close it. And that requires I leave the penny change. More time if I bring her a dollar, a quarter, a nickel, and wait for the penny.

And the POS is truly a real POS. It takes an extra 2 seconds to complete the transaction that it need not. A regular card takes no longer, save that the swipe takes fractionally longer than my tap.

You've not often been behind someone scrambling to find the right card, much less the last penny for exact change.

Or you live on a pension. I wouldn't like to lose even $500.

âMake a provocative comment and be censured from work, friends and future prospects...â

This already happens, you know. One of my family members is an elementary school teacher. Every budget proposal is CRITICAL!, every election is the future of our nation, and any politician that proposes limiting spending to available revenues is killing education and hates our children!!!

I can't talk politics with her. It's literally her pocketbook. No matter the realities, she is only interested in job.

And I understand. I work in an even more arbitrary environment. Business.

Well, legitimate news reports and court cases, but you're welcome to your opinion of journalism and the legal profession.

Yes I have read the specs. Contactless mode is not an EMV communication. It doesn't use the chip. It is essentially a mag stripe transaction via RF, similar to NFC.

In contactless mode, mag stripe mode must always be supported, while EMV chip mode is optional.

it looks like book C-5 fully described this, going past the mag stripe mode.

Feh. I wonder if all cards will have RF-activated chips.

500EUR is a lot to a pensioner. Often devastating.

This was still happening in 2012

The reports were genuine. Trying to link this to some imagined Luddite revolution involving the UKIP is a sad attempt to politicize genuine problems.

I haven't seen too many of that reports lately, but during the introduction ATM fraud was just common enough that the banks largely gave in and restored funds.

Yes. The old women trying to withdraw their pension at the ATM were being defrauded. No, it wasn't millions. Are you defending the banks, or the chip&pin rollout, or just chiming in to be contrary?

There were complaints from many a pensioner that their accounts were emptied, no idea how. Mostly because these old sods were forced into debit cards and had a hard time with the pin. Not hard to shoulder-surf these victims.

Adding shields and such to the ATM didn't maker it easier for the incompetent.

There is NO CONTACTLESS EMV. That is something else, RFID or NFC.

And not at all the same thing.

The premise behind chip & signature in the US being the initial deployment is that card holders are not ready to abandon their signature for credit transactions.

Having seen what passes for a signature leads me to doubt this will last very long.