Why are contactless payment methods faster than inserting the chip?

Question

I found it weird that a wireless technology happens to be faster than a payment method that has actual physical contact with the payment reader. It just seems like it’s the other way around. Like most things are faster when they have a direct wired connection or in this case physical contact but somehow when paying, inserting the chip takes longer than the contactless payment method. Why is that?

In: 109

Answer 1

The amount of data being transmitted is tiny so the communication speed is not an issue. Contactless wins because you just have to position the card reasonably close to the reader. For contactless you have to align the card in a slot and insert which takes longer.