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
The time is not spent by the machine communicating with the card. When you do chip and pin the card machine is communicating with the bank or credit card provider, and checking that the card is genuine and can afford the payment. This takes non-negligible time. In a contactless payment the vendor doesn’t check the card and just takes a risk that it isn’t genuine. The transaction will be settled up at the end of the day. This is why there are generally limits on the value of transaction that you can do contactlessly; it protects the vendor from being left out of pocket for a large sum.
*Edit: this answer is Eurocentric. I understand that the technology may be different in other places, though in that case I doubt there would be a noticeable difference in speed.*
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