I watch the British “Coronation Street” and see them just swiping their phones at a little gadget when buying a coffee at the local diner. Swipe and go, no other steps.
Honestly, the US (where we live) does this surprisingly well, considering how backwards of a country it is in a lot of other ways.
Credit cards, and even debit cards (like the one from our bank), generally have NFC these days, just like phones do. But you don’t need to faff about with your phone. Just pull out your card, tap it, done.
No app compatibility to deal with, just as easy as phone NFC, I don’t know why that’s not the standard over there. (Plenty of people do use phone payments here too though. I don’t get why.)
Magnetic strips, technically all cards still have them as a backup, but 99.9% of readers accept all three and NFC tap or chip is usually the go-to!
The train station ticket machines where we reload our transit card only take swipes, though. So it is still a thing in very rare places.
When we first got our “food stamps” card (it apparently used to be physical stamps?? but that was long before our time. now you get basically a debit card that can only be used on food), it was also swipe-only. But then a year or two ago they replaced it with one that has a chip and can even do NFC! Nifty.
Cheques, nah, I think you still CAN get a physical paycheck, maybe?, if for some reason you wanted to?, but basically everyone does direct deposit these days
…at least, people who have bank accounts
that’s one reason to get a check. So yeah, those are still a thing, but not common. There are probably-sketchy “check cashing” places in low-income areas that you can take checks to instead of a bank if you don’t have a bank, I don’t know how that works.
Taxes – YEP. 100% still a thing. Fuck TurboTax & co., they pretty much bribed the government to keep this system because it makes them lots of money (because they can sell you “tax prep software” that does your taxes for you and is absurdly expensive and oh! you gotta buy a new one every year because of minor changes to the tax codes!).
That was the default in the UK for quite a while and a lot of (typically older, I think) people still use a physical card for contactless payment. Most people have moved to mobile contactless payment because it’s just as quick as fishing a card out of a wallet, most people always carry their phone and it has a degree of biometric security that the physical card doesn’t.
I don’t generally carry a wallet or cash and haven’t for years. I have all my cards in my e-wallet, including my default credit, bank, loyalty and even my work door access cards on there. If I do forget my phone, I can do all their same from my watch and never have to carry a wallet with a dozen pieces of plastic in. A win for pocket space, if nothing else!
I watch the British “Coronation Street” and see them just swiping their phones at a little gadget when buying a coffee at the local diner. Swipe and go, no other steps.
Sadly NFC doesn’t work on graphene though
It does if you just slip a tap-to-pay enabled bank card in the back of your phone case.
Honestly, the US (where we live) does this surprisingly well, considering how backwards of a country it is in a lot of other ways.
Credit cards, and even debit cards (like the one from our bank), generally have NFC these days, just like phones do. But you don’t need to faff about with your phone. Just pull out your card, tap it, done.
No app compatibility to deal with, just as easy as phone NFC, I don’t know why that’s not the standard over there. (Plenty of people do use phone payments here too though. I don’t get why.)
– Frost
Are magnetic strips and signatures still a thing there? And do people still get actual ‘pay cheques’?
Blows my mind that you have to do your own taxes there.
Magnetic strips, technically all cards still have them as a backup, but 99.9% of readers accept all three and NFC tap or chip is usually the go-to!
The train station ticket machines where we reload our transit card only take swipes, though. So it is still a thing in very rare places.
When we first got our “food stamps” card (it apparently used to be physical stamps?? but that was long before our time. now you get basically a debit card that can only be used on food), it was also swipe-only. But then a year or two ago they replaced it with one that has a chip and can even do NFC! Nifty.
Cheques, nah, I think you still CAN get a physical paycheck, maybe?, if for some reason you wanted to?, but basically everyone does direct deposit these days
…at least, people who have bank accounts
that’s one reason to get a check. So yeah, those are still a thing, but not common. There are probably-sketchy “check cashing” places in low-income areas that you can take checks to instead of a bank if you don’t have a bank, I don’t know how that works.
Taxes – YEP. 100% still a thing. Fuck TurboTax & co., they pretty much bribed the government to keep this system because it makes them lots of money (because they can sell you “tax prep software” that does your taxes for you and is absurdly expensive and oh! you gotta buy a new one every year because of minor changes to the tax codes!).
– Frost
That was the default in the UK for quite a while and a lot of (typically older, I think) people still use a physical card for contactless payment. Most people have moved to mobile contactless payment because it’s just as quick as fishing a card out of a wallet, most people always carry their phone and it has a degree of biometric security that the physical card doesn’t. I don’t generally carry a wallet or cash and haven’t for years. I have all my cards in my e-wallet, including my default credit, bank, loyalty and even my work door access cards on there. If I do forget my phone, I can do all their same from my watch and never have to carry a wallet with a dozen pieces of plastic in. A win for pocket space, if nothing else!