Joanna Stern on the Chip Card Shitshow Here in the U.S.

Joanna Stern:

After pulling out the stopwatch for over 50 transactions at various retailers in recent days, I can confirm that it takes twice as long to pay with a chip card than with a card swipe or mobile payment — on average, 13 seconds versus 6 seconds.

Think about it this way: If you made two purchases every day for a year with a chip card instead of a swipe or smartphone, you’d spend 85 extra minutes at the checkout counter. That’s nearly an hour and a half of your time, to give someone your money.

And that doesn’t count the time playing swipe-or-chip roulette. Consider yourself lucky when you encounter a “NO CHIP!” sign or a duct-tape blockade over the slot.

Nice follow-up to last week’s episode of The Talk Show. And I love the embedded audio in her lede — words alone cannot describe just how bad that sound is for a successful transaction.

★ Thursday, 4 August 2016