Do Americans still use “swipers” to pay for stuff?

32 comments

1. Yes. You can swipe, insert, or tap your card on it.

2. If they want. We can also insert or tap.

3. Our machines are typically 3 in one, insert, swipe, or tap. We like having our options to do things our way. We’re kinda independent like that.

4. I see machines like that all over Europe too

5. Yes, these are still commonplace. They’re being replaced, but slowly.

6. Almost every place has that type. Insert, swipe, or tap.

   Horrifying, I know, but I even use cash sometimes. 😱

7. Majority of devices allow for swipe, chip, or tap.

8. If the chip fails 3 times you swipe.

9. Yes, they still exist. No, it’s not an indication of a backward society.

10. Yep. Used at least three yesterday.

11. I guarantee that swiping credit cards is still a thing in your country as well. You’ve surely run across [these](https://squareup.com/us/en/hardware/reader).

12. Most machines take swipe, but I honestly can’t remember the last time I didn’t tap.

    In fact, it’s becoming extremely rare to pay with anything other than my phone or watch. Of course this doesn’t include places that are cash only like little kids’ lemonade stands.

13. The machines like that accept all types of payments other than cash.. they’re not just for swiping but you can pay that way if you want.

14. Why are we constantly asked this? Yes, we have the same technology you do. Yes, we use it.

15. That’s the type of machine that most businesses still have. Most cards have a chip now so you need to insert them. Some have contactless payment but there are security concerns with that so not everyone wants it on their card.

16. The modern ones normally support swipe, insert, or tap. I normally tap as it’s fastest and I can use my phone. I only use swipe if there’s some kind of issue with the other two methods.

17. >contactless

    Even the “contactless” readers tend to require a little contact. Which is probably to keep people from stealing your credit card info by standing close to you.

18. Our bigger issue is no PIN on our chip-enabled credit cards.

19. Yes they still exist. All sorts of devices exist.

    Merchants have to pay for these things themselves so a small business may choose to not upgrade to newer technology just for the sake of doing so, when they’re already paying the processing fees associated with taking card payments.

20. Nope. Pretty much all contactless now. Most of the time I tap to pay using google wallet. I only ever take out my credit card at restaurants/bars.

21. Payment machines still have the ability to read magnetic stripes. Looking through all of my own cards, 97% of them have chips and 76% support contactless too. The stripe readers still have to stay in place for the remaining 3%.

22. I still swipe about 25% of my purchases due to chip reader malfunction, the rest are chip or contactless

    There are still a few large retailers who refuse contactless payments to promote their mobile wallets, which is annoying. And then there’s Home Depot which sporadically requires a manager approval for any magnetic stripe transaction for some unclear reason.

23. Yeah, except they’re also contactless and look like this.

    https://ingenico.com/sites/default/files/product-category/2022-06/laneserie-7000-8000-front.png

24. Many payment terminals physically support all 3 methods but chip is probably the most common to be used overall not tap.

    – Magnetic strips (like your pic) – still on credit/debit cards, still on many payment terminals as backup (also often for reading things like their rewards program cards or their branded gift cards) – no longer default method of payment. If your card has a chip you generally can’t *choose* to swipe instead – and basically all cards have a chip now. Some have a failover enabled where if you try the insert chip and it fails to read correctly enough times it’ll let you swipe.

    – About the only places you still see mag strip as the *only* reader is old ones embedded into something for low value transactions. My car wash still hasn’t updated, for example. It’s built into that machine and I’m guessing they don’t find it worth it.

    – Chip – you insert it into the end of the machine and it reads the chip – these are common and one of the normal methods of payment.

    – Contactless/tap – also common to use, still find some places that don’t support it/don’t have it enabled though.

    ———-

    Background info:

    To force the changeover a few years back the card networks flipped the liability for fraudulent transactions to the merchant for transactions still on the old “swipe”/mag strip readers.

    There’s nothing legally stopping them from continuing to accept them…..but they’re now going to be left with the loss if the card later turns out to be stolen or the like.

    Whereas with chip/tap transactions, they aren’t liable (if they followed procedures) – the card network will eat the loss, not them.

    For my car wash, probably not a big deal. Hard to steal 100 car washes and you’d probably be real easy to catch if you did. For somewhere with merchandise to buy, especially if it’s not trivially low-priced, big deal.

25. Tbh I thought this post was gonna be about Dora the Explora

26. Majority I would say is inserting the chip. Tap probably second place. A lot of smaller retailers have tap enabled, but it just fails. Better to just insert and avoid wasting the time

27. some places like mom and pop shops don’t have updated systems but mostly everywhere is up to date with insert, swipe and tap machines, even small business. we are not behind like a lot of people think

28. They usually have both options, swipe and tap (what you call contactless). The US is all about options.

29. They’re usually 3-in-one [like this](https://www.discountcreditcardsupply.com/products/dejavoo-z11-emv-ctls-ethernet-and-wifi-credit-card-terminal-1)

    So, you have the option to swipe, insert, or tap.

    Funny though, here in San Francisco, the Whole Foods markets even have biometric pay now. We have “pay with your palm” terminals at the checkout. I think it’s a limited rollout for now. I haven’t tried it.

30. Most payment terminals these days include all 3 options- swipe, tap, and chip. They’re very common.

    Very few places are cashless or cash-only.

31. Everywhere I go now has the insert method, with about a 60% chance that the contactless is working

32. Much less often. With PCI regulations if a vendor has you swipe a card instead of using RFID or Chip insert the merchant is on the hook if that is a fraudulent purchase.