On Sat, 23 Feb 2019 12:41:20 +0000, Bod wrote:

On 23/02/2019 12:25, wrote:
On Friday, February 22, 2019 at 2:08:07 PM UTC-5, Rod Speed wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Thursday, February 21, 2019 at 8:29:35 PM UTC-5, Rod Speed wrote:
wrote
micky wrote:

The fancy one that I tried first and last took credit cards, had a

Seriously - a CREDIT CARD SLOT - for a tire air pump?!

This 21st century SUCKS.

Not if you don’t bother with coins anymore.

And you don’t swipe the card in the slot anymore,
you wave it at the machine, dinosaur.

The U.S. banking system is the dinosaur.

True, weird that the country that invented the credit card
manages to have the crudest card system around even now.

The standard credit card comes with a chip
that must be inserted into the reader,

Most do in fact do contactless now.

Lucky you.

and a magnetic strip for readers than aren't equipped to use the chip.

Ours still do have magnetic strips, but the terminals
now tell you to insert the card so it can read the chip
if you try swiping it. The swipe slot is just there for when
you dinosaurs show up with chipless cards as tourists.

At least for my biased sampling, card readers on gas pumps don't
have a chip reader. Nor do they have any real authentication mechanism,
except for typing in your postal (ZIP) code. Some of them have RFID
readers for the gas station's own brand of credit card, but not for
generic VISA or MasterCard.

No pin. Credit card companies recently decided a signature
is not required, but most merchants still require a signature.

Yeah, weirdly primitive.

The rumor is that they thought Americans were too dumb to learn another
PIN.

Cindy Hamilton

The UK has used contactless Debit cards (up to £30) for a few years
now and plastic banknotes.

Question: Has the USA already changed to plastic banknotes?
Nope -and they still have their "pennies" too - and paper dollars.

Here in Canada all bills are "plastic" and only 05, .10, .25, 1.00
and 2.00 coins. No penies and no bills under $5.00