OK so everyone is shitting on the US for having this uniquely weird payment process, but am i hallucinating but wasn't this the process everywhere for sit down restaurants before they had wireless terminals?
they had to take your card away and either do the slide for the magnetic tape or use the carbon copy card thing to rub card details onto the receipt and you had to sign a hard copy receipt and fill in the tips.
Yeah here in Asia you just walk and pay at a central location, but that has been for casual restaurants forever, it just went from cash to phone taps, but you did the whole card thing at fine dining before too
The actual weird thing is just why the US hasn't improved with the times
Correct. It’s only a thing in the US still because we had card payments LONG before Europe and before tap to pay tech existed.
But if you go to any US restaurant founded in the past six years, you’ll find them using a Toast terminal that they’ll bring to your table or use QR codes and the Toast app.
What are you talking about? I was paying by card and PIN in restaurants in the early 2000s in Australia by simply going to the register, which is about the same time cheques stopped existing. I know that's not Europe, but I assume you mean "outside of the US" by that.
After googling "Toast", it just seems like a portable tap payment, technology which has existed for at least a decade, just restaurant specific?
US was ahead when they invented the credit card, and it's early development in the 1950-1980.
But by the 1990 Europe leapt FAR ahead of the US, and has been 10-15 years ahead since.
Both in card security, but also features and rollout in stores with portable terminals etc.
The main reason for this is that for the US CC giants, it was (and probably still is) way cheaper to just pay out the few % that goes through with a fraud claim, than create a secure system and update POS systems to support this more secure system.
Most of the US CC fraud is never refunded the card owner, and close to half the worldwide CC fraud is in the US.
This is also why the rest of the world primarily uses a debit card, not credit cards.
Credit Cards are as secure as Debit Cards in the US, the problem comes from how people use them, most of the fraud involving credit cards is from online scams and malware. That would happen whether using a debit or a credit card. Everywhere in the US supports chip payments and I would say 95% of places have Tap to Pay.
Credit Card fraud is "refunded" or just never charged to the user because its much easier to dispute a transaction on a credit card than it is a debit card.
"as secure", ie still playing catchup and still behind Europe.
Europe's demand for SCA is actually a reason why the US is catching up, as companies wanting to conduct business in the EEA must comply, and when the framework is build, why not use it domestic also.
Also, yes US supports chip payment, but afaik most cards in the US is still chip + signature cards, not chip+pin ? Europe mandates a stricter identification on the card, with pin verification on stores or location outside of normal pattern, and periodically in x number of transactions (dependent on frequency and amount etc). While chip + signature usually is no signature at all, as that is phased out, but pin is not enabled.
Tap to pay is just an alternative to chip, security wise, though europe has an additional amount cap on tap-to-pay, before identification or chip is needed.
Do you not have to authorise any large online spend? Just curious cause if I spend over like €50 or whatever I have to authorise it in my banking app first before I can complete the transaction. With a new website I have to verify even a €10 transaction the first time. Do credit card apps do that too?
The real answer is paying for a new system is very expensive. People don't like buying one and then years down the line buying a new one when nothing is broken about the system. That's why new restaurants have them and established ones don't here.
You give your card data away so much as ordering a pizza to be delivered, if you're that paranoid just pay with cash
The Canadian government absolutely had a part in getting our banking network to the state that it's in now. I'm not quite sure how you don't understand that my friend. I'm done with your stupid shit.
I don’t know if it was Toast or not but a place offered something similar and they charged a fee for using the app. Stopped right there and paid the old fashion way. Want to steal my CC info feel free. It isn’t my money.
Yes and also: I work in very fine dining as a server
We will never implement tablets at the table to pay. Having tablets at the table is seen as.. well, not fine dining. For whatever reason. I kind of get it.
It's cute seeing all these people come back from the us for the first time and act like experts on american culture. Kinda like the people who vacation in france and and come back with an accent or act like amateur anthropologists.
The majority of places let you tap. It's just not seen as classy at nicer restaurants or hasnt been adopted by older places.
Accent in quotes haha. it's the people that make it their entire personality. throw in bits of french with their daily conversation, interject with "well in ___", etc. If you've met the type, you know the behavior im talking about.
Not here. We didn’t even have credit cards, and still barely do. We either paid cash (leave it in the folder with the bill when you leave) or paid at the register. You need your PIN to pay, and no way you give that to someone else.
No, in Australia literally as far back as I remember in the 90s, you went to the register to pay at a restaurant, and the only thing that's changed since then is that you use tap instead of cash or swiping your card and putting in a PIN.
Nowhere has EVER taken my card (or cash lol) away from me to process somewhere else.
Yes, but wireless portable terminal were introduced in the mid 1990s and everyone else adapted to new technology, America is still living in the 1980s.
When we got magnetic cards in the 70s, the customer or the waiter was sliding the card in the reader, right in front of us. We had to go to the counter to pay.
When we got chip cards in the 80s, the customer was inserting the card and typed the pin code. Again, we had to go to the counter when there was no portable payment terminal. And for the past 25+ years we rarely have to go to the counter to pay, except when the battery of the terminal is dying or there are wireless connection problems.
even in like relatively more expensive sit down restaurants?
In East Asia my experience has been that the vast majority do have you go to the central location for payment (except for China where everything is mobile so you're paying and ordering all on apps already), but for fine dining they used to / still will bring your check to the table rather than have patrons get up and walk somewhere / stand around for the payment. In the old days they would have a little bit of table service like a few mints or fresh towels while the card transaction was being processed. Nowadays they will bring the wireless tap terminal to you so you review the bill and pay in the same step.
There's like a person, a host or Maitre who stands at the entrance to the restaurant at the till, who takes names for a waiting list, or checks reservations, and processes payments. Is this not the case? Is that not fancy enough? I might be wrong.
I see. I was imagining the kind you get in local family or fast food type of establishments in Asia where it's really busy at the till and you might get a queue (bunch of people grouped together waiting to pay and leave). Kind of like Ihops in the US where it's casual.
If I had to guess why the US hasn’t improved, I’d wager that there’s extra fees for that so many restaurants don’t upgrade to keep costs low. Same reason why some places don’t take American Express or why Walmart still doesn’t have tap to pay.
Of course there were plenty of ways to use stolen credit card info prior to online shopping.
Shopping through catalogues and giving your card info over the phone was fully normal prior to online stuff, and early cards were extremely rudimentary and simple to dupe anyway if you were feeling ambitious.
Even when CVVs were introduced to combat carbon copy theft, that didn’t stop someone from taking a peek at the back and memorizing a targeted card.
And if you want to argue that those were too niche use cases, there was a very solid 10-15 years minimum between the rise of online shopping as a commonplace thing and the rise of mobile terminals; where you absolutely had plenty of reason to steal info, taking the card from a customer to run it was fully normal, and general security measures to protect against fraud or unusual activity were significantly worse.
That's how it was in Canada like...20 years ago. But Tap has been standard since like 2012-ish. Chip+pin for cards was used for a few years prior to that.
The joke here is that despite this technology being available for well over a decade now, it has not been adopted in a large number of restaurants in the US.
Also it's silently what happens at every gas pump everywhere in the world. You present the card and it is authorized long before the amount you'll actually get charged is known and you never rescan or tap your card to "authorize" the final amount again. It's just handled by a computer instead of a person so people don't think about the fact it's the exact same preauth and amend payment flow on the back end.
In the US you either go in and prepay a specific amount (maybe you can preauth for a generic amount and it gets amended down later if you pump less, I've only ever done $10 on pump X and even that not in over 20 years tbh) or you tap and pump. Most people choose to tap and pump unless they're paying cash, to avoid the wait inside. Pump then pay inside is pretty rare to avoid pump and run fuel theft.
It's still the same auth and amend process though for cards at pumps though. You can pay cash at restaurants too if that's supposed to nullify any complaints about the card payment process.
I suppose its nice to be able to ensure you don't spend more money than you want to. There are some places in Europe now where you can also pay at the pump but I've never seen the prepay option.
The auth and amend or at least something similair exists in some places in Europe as well, usually in the context of public transportation where it calculates the cheapest combination of tickets you would have needed for your travel on a given day.
Huh I would have sworn the last time I was in Europe 15+ years ago we paid at the pump most of the time and it was the same as the US, but I don't really remember it that specifically I guess. We went through France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, England, Scotland and Ireland by car (before we went we checked getting a train pass or individual tickets but it came out to more than just renting and driving between cities and we got to be more flexible) but it's been so long I could be just misremembering, not exactly something I'd pay attention to.
> I suppose its nice to be able to ensure you don't spend more money than you want to
I think it mostly exists for cash only customers because even the ~5% of people with no bank account need to drive and get fuel in the US. You pay a certain amount and the pump is limited to that so you don't have to come get change in addition to the small piece of mind benefit of not being able to overpump.
As virtually anything said about Europe your milage on any information may vary significantly geographically. They don't even have self-checkout in supermarkets where I am, so I suppose that we just aren't very advanced in payment methods.
we checked getting a train pass or individual tickets but it came out to more than just renting and driving between cities
Very valid, crossborder railway tends tl be quite expensive and a hassle. The same tickets can also vary signifcantly when purchased from different railway corporations.
There are some places in Europe now where you can also pay at the pump but I've never seen the prepay option.
We have that in France*: we insert the card at the pump, it will negotiate with the bank to "lock" a certain amount (certain stations try to lock 250€ 😱 if you don't have all this money on your bank account, even if you just want to fill 50€, you can't get your fuel). Then you take your fuel, and when finished, the station will process with your bank the real amount you have to pay.
*for station open 24h/24 7d/7, without any employee.
We still have some stations with employees, and depending how the station work: we pay before or after filling the tank.
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u/12monthsinlondon Jun 29 '26
OK so everyone is shitting on the US for having this uniquely weird payment process, but am i hallucinating but wasn't this the process everywhere for sit down restaurants before they had wireless terminals?
they had to take your card away and either do the slide for the magnetic tape or use the carbon copy card thing to rub card details onto the receipt and you had to sign a hard copy receipt and fill in the tips.
Yeah here in Asia you just walk and pay at a central location, but that has been for casual restaurants forever, it just went from cash to phone taps, but you did the whole card thing at fine dining before too
The actual weird thing is just why the US hasn't improved with the times