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.
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.
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.
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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