Just announced today that Target is shifting to a Mastercard, chip and pin card and will convert all its stores to chip and pin function during the next year. The resistance to chip and pin in the US may begin to erode.
PS I edited out the reference to Target and Sears because it was in error. Thanks, Michael for calling it to my attention.
Sears is a part of Kmart.
Frank, either you have a glitch or you are special. A few of your posts today just keep running all the way to the right, instead of the normal line breaks. I have to shift my screen to the right to read them. But the others don't. Is anyone else seeing this?
I thought it was just my phone ...but yes, I have the same on this post.
I see Frank's message as one long line, too, and have to scroll to the right to see it in its entirety (I don't have a 94" monitor, yet).
I'm not so concerned about not having chip & pin at home, but it's a pain not having it at automatic machines in Europe. Our chip and signature cards are a step in the right direction, but we're not the whole way there.
Yes, Frank, your message is also "one, long line" on my mac. I have had a chip and pin card for a couple of years now and it's definitely convenient for overseas use. Using it here is exactly the same as any other credit card I've ever had. Don't have to enter the PIN. I didn't know Target (or maybe KMart?) and Sears were a joint venture!
Sam's Club has started taking pin and chip cards at their registers. If you have a pin and chip card (I do) you have to put your card into a separate slot and enter you pin number.
I'm seeing it that way on my iPad.
I know, I know. I keep forgetting. It is because I am of the school that likes to indent paragraphs. I have adjusted it.
You are correct Michael. Don't know why I linked Target and Sears. I knew better. And chip and signature is not the same nor half way there.
Frank,
The resistance to Chip & PIN technology may be starting to "erode" as it will be expensive for U.S. banks and merchants if the don't upgrade to the new technology. One Blog that I read stated....
"Despite the cost of updating credit card technology, the major credit card companies are preparing for change. After the October 2015 deadline, banks and retailers will reportedly face penalties if their clients’ cards are compromised in a security breach. It’ll be expensive for merchants to upgrade their equipment, but it could prove very expensive if they don’t. Whether or not the October 2015 deadline is set in stone remains to be seen; similar deadlines have been set and passed with no changes."
Hopefully you'll all be getting new Chip & PIN cards in the near future. This list shows some of the agencies that are currently offering them.....
http://creditcardforum.com/blog/chip-and-pin-credit-cards-usa/
The news release for Target indicated that it would cost 100 million just for Target to shift to Chip and Pin hardware. Given the beating Target took over their data breach, they probably have no choice in the attempt to regain lost customers and confidences in their data systems. But the chip and pin is not perfect either.
So are surgically-implanted chips far behind? NSA can use that to keep tabs on all of us, too :-/
Sure, why not? Cut down on id theft. Have to cut it out of you and implant in themselves. That should discourage ID theft.
They already have chips in cats and dogs...why not us? Creepy...
Are you talking chips to secure the Identify of someone, like a dead John Doe, or chips to track people's movements.?
Elaine, couldn't one chip do both?
Ofcourse, let put the personal chip in the cat or the dog and they can do the payments and identification as well, if things go wrong they will kept responsible, or..........? :)
I'm going to get a surgically implanted money belt.
Cyn, I hope you understand that the Chip in the particular cards under discussion is not readable from a distance. It has eight gold-ish contact points that are connected to when you insert it into the reader that almost no American retailers have. It's not an instrument of government surveillance. It remains to be seen if these Target cards (which they tried around 2001 and gave up on) will have a Foreign Transaction Charge charge (of say, 3%) that makes them less useful to readers of this forum. But if current Target "swipe" VISA cards have such a charge, I would expect the next generation to have one too.
@Tim-right, the chips on credit cards are flat, but much bigger than cat/dog chips, which are much smaller than a grain of rice. Personally, the chips I prefer are of the Kettle variety, with salt & pepper. Definitely avoid the cow variety :-p
I recall Target promoting a chip card years ago. They even mailed me a special card reader -- I don't recall if it was to make online payments simple, or if they thought I was a retailer (I'm not) who might embrace the new technology. I never unpacked the device and it's probably still around the house somewhere.
With technology, who knows where surgical implantation of some kind of electronic devices might lead in the future? Hopefully the recipient would be aware of, and agreeable to, its insertion, if things ever came to that. Back to the payment thing, it would certainly be convenient for travelers, although temporarily expensive for some retailers and credit card issuers, if all cards and processing systems were compatible.
@Tim,
"Cyn, I hope you understand that the Chip in the particular cards under discussion is not readable from a distance. It has eight gold-ish contact points that are connected to when you insert it into the reader"
Just to clarify, while the Chip & PIN part of the cards can't be read from a distance, most C&P cards issued these days also have embedded RFID chips (ie: PayPass, PayWave) which can be read from short distances. At the moment, all of my C&P credit cards have RFID and my Credit Union and other debit cards will be adding RFID capability sometime this year. THIS VIDEO is a few years old, but shows how the cards can be remotely scanned. Whether this is a realistic "security risk" is certainly debatable.
@Anita - they're trying out the microchips on pets before they start implanting them in us. The chips will contain info such as our ID, fingerprints, credit/debit card (cashless society, anyone?), medical info, etc. It is creepy!
And it's about time retailers and banks in this country shift to chip & PIN. I heard a story about this on "Marketplace" on NPR a few months ago, about how chip & PIN cards are more secure than magnetic-strip cards because retailers store less info from chip & PIN cards and therefore there's less personal info for hackers to steal.
