EMV (Europay, MasterCard, VISA) technology is everywhere now.
“Please insert your chip card if your card has a chip on it!”
Transactions today emphasize security more than ease of use.
This is why the below situation happens:
Nowadays, when we use EMV technology, the tiny chip on our credit/debit cards calls home and generates a one-time cryptogram to ensure the authenticity of the transaction in the name of fraud protection.
In other words, before you can take your card back, the card must be verified.
This takes a period of time, which I plan to cover in a future article. But essentially, the wait time is generally 8–15 seconds where you and the fellow shoppers in line have nothing to do except wait for an authorization or a decline from your bank. Not fun for you, and not fun for your cashier, either.
Pros of EMV that matter to you:
- Secure due to having a chip on the card which demands authentication from the terminal. Unauthorized terminals will not be able to make any headway. Say goodbye to people trying to steal your information from a swipe by swiping twice and pretending that they know nothing.
- Requires extensive validation for the hardware, and in-depth knowledge to even try to copy. Your average kid on the street isn’t going to be stealing your information off the chip, and if they do, it’s literally useless unless they happen to be a chip manufacturer and a payments expert.
- Protects you from liability. If your card does get compromised even after all of this, it isn’t your fault — it’s actually the card issuers fault and they’ll compensate you. No need to fight as hard for your money back. (Blame VISA / MasterCard / the big guys)
Cons of EMV:
- I’m stuck there, waiting for my transaction to finish before I can remove my card and begin bagging my 100$ worth of groceries. Nobody likes downtime.
- Not everyone is on the train yet. So in some places, you’ll still have to swipe your card. The US is the last major world power to adopt EMV and roll it out. In fact, we’re fairly overdue.
- Complicated and difficult to understand fully, and few know what they are talking about. Have you ever tried to teach somebody how to cook? Do you know how to cook? EMV is like being told to make a steak medium-rare, and your client whines that it’s well done despite you sending it out of the kitchen at the perfect resting temperature.
Here’s how traditional EMV works:
You come up to the counter and you pay for your goods / services.
Once you know the final amount and everything is tallied up, you insert your card into the terminal.
The terminal asks you, is $31.99 the amount? You indicate yes.
The terminal then switches to this screen.
And you wait as your card information is sent to the backend host.
And you wait for something to happen!
Let’s call the host John, for the sake of putting a face to it. John sits on a desk all day and sees people like you sending in transactions all day. John approves some, John denies some. But nobody does anything until John says something.
Your transaction is a paper sitting on John’s desk, and he’s just coming back from lunch break. Peeved, right?
Until finally, you get something like this from John in the mail 4 days later -
And finally, you pull your card out from the terminal, pick up your groceries, and stumble out to see the bright light of day.
But Jason, what is Quickchip?
Quickchip is an EMV transaction made simpler by cutting out the wait time without losing any of the security.
A solid quickchip implementation cuts your wait time down from 8–13 seconds down to 2 seconds.
How is this possible? Why do I care?
You care because it feels natural.
You care because there are 99 problems in the world, and waiting for your silly card in a silly terminal doesn’t need to be one.
You care because your customers can do a payment securely and process more so that you can sleep at night knowing that you’re supporting the cutting edge of technology.
You care because it’s a shortcut that you don’t even notice and probably only appreciate it now.
QuickChip operates as follows:
It uses a pre-agreed upon amount (1$, 5$..) and initiates a transaction with the chip card. You don’t need to ring up all your groceries. Just insert your card in right when you begin scanning your groceries.
The chip card follows along, and provides the needed information to the payment terminal, along with generation of the secure cryptogram. All the elements of EMV.
The terminal then plays dumb, says to the chip card “I can’t find John!”
John (from earlier), our friend the host is on lunch break, by the way.
The terminal then leans close and whispers to you / your card.
“I can leave him a message and tell him. Why don’t you go ahead and go on with your merry day?”
The terminal indicates for the user to remove the card at this point. But the terminal stores all that information (the cryptogram, the amount agreed upon..) and continues the normal procedure as follows — sending it to some payment gateway, up to an acquiring party, to John.
You remove your card. John will still take his sweet time and approve your transaction once he gets back from lunch.
But the difference is massive. You no longer pay the price for John’s lunch break. You’re moving on to the next big thing.
QuickChip is as simple as that.
We came up with a terrific process to secure chip card payments.
It was slow.
So we came up with a better process to deliver security in half the time.
Are there any cons?
Not at all. By all intents and purposes, if the card is declined and John throws a fit (you wanted 50$ and you only had 5, you nincompoop!), he’ll still let you know on your way out and ask you to try a different card. It’s still a valid EMV transaction!
This concludes my “why do I care”.
The next time you insert a chip card and it tells you to remove it in 2–3 seconds instead of the usual 8–13, just know that it’s due to the implementation of QuickChip and some very clever individuals.
I plan to cover the technical details of QuickChip in my next write-up. Stay tuned.
