Timeline for Why does my debit card have a stripe AND a chip?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 8, 2014 at 19:54 | vote | accept | Kvothe | ||
| Apr 8, 2014 at 19:49 | comment | added | Thomas Pornin | Yes. And since it is their money in the end, and banks tend to have a good grasp of money (in all senses of the word), I kinda trust them for making the decision which minimizes their losses. | |
| Apr 8, 2014 at 19:47 | comment | added | Kvothe | Oh okay, so effectively they are picking legacy support for outdated terminals over a bit of security? | |
| Apr 8, 2014 at 19:39 | comment | added | Thomas Pornin | In France nobody uses the stripe. In Canada, chip usage is very recent (about 5 years or so) and not all merchants have switched yet. Chip usage in North American cards has been stalled for 20 years (1986 to 2006) because of the 1986 French patent on smart cards (patent that expired in 2006...). | |
| Apr 8, 2014 at 19:38 | comment | added | Thomas Pornin | Skimming copies the magnetic stripe and tries to get the PIN code as well (e.g. with a well-placed camera). This allows crafting a fake card with only the magnetic stripe. That fake card will work on all systems which accept a chip-less card. This is one of the reasons why banks work at transitioning to mandatory chip usage, but they still ship cards with a stripe because the transition is not complete yet. In effect, the weakness is not the presence of the magnetic stripe, but the fact that there still are terminals who work on the stripe. | |
| Apr 8, 2014 at 19:26 | comment | added | Kvothe | What if the ATM is skimmed? I don't know how it works in other countries, but here the bank always ends up with the bill. | |
| Apr 8, 2014 at 19:21 | history | answered | Thomas Pornin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |