Comment on Surely they yearn for the mines
jqubed@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I understand what community I’m in, but I feel like this relates to something I’ve thought about since using a rental electric vehicle. There are a lot of people who can write programs for computers. There are far fewer people who can create electronic devices reliably work in an outdoor, exposed environment. I started suspecting one reason so many charging stations want to use an app to collect payments online is because it’s easy to connect to Square or Cybersource or whatever. Making a card reader that supports magstripe, chip, or NFC and can survive being exposed to sun, rain, snow, ice, and extreme temperatures is a lot harder. Gas pumps have done this for decades, although I’m sure the roofs help, but even they had to turn to companies like Verifone when cards started using chips, and those companies didn’t make things easy (they’re why gas pumps play commercials now).
echodot@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Is magstrip that’s the problem. It means as an exposed component that has to be in the environment and can’t be enclosed. NFC readers can read the chips through several millimetres of materials so they can be totally embedded.
Real solution is for North America to just get off Mag strip no one’s used it in the rest of the world in about 20 years.
Goudewup@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
They still use magstrips? That’s crazy
echodot@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Yeah the US banking system is really archaic. They still use signatures as a form of security.
I’m really not sure what the resistance to modernisation is. But it causes all sorts of problems like this, that the rest of the world just never experiences.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
It’s still available and on your card but it’s only really used when the chip doesn’t work
jqubed@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
The NFC readers can read the non-NFC chip without it being physically inserted? I’ve never seen that before