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this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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TechTakes
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the US (banking system, but not exclusively that) is living in the past to a stunning degree
couple years back when I visited (mid 2010s), in DC I had someone make a physical imprint of my CC for a payment, and in NYC doing card transactions on the subway ticket machines it doesn't ask for card pin but instead for zip code (and as a non-resident, you just enter
0000
(never tried to see if others work))checks/cheques are still a rather frequent way of inter-business/inter-person value transfer
We usually trail a bit behind here in Sweden so none of the plastic cards in my wallet have raised numerals anymore, but the last generation I had did.
I’m old enough to literally handling cashing checks as a bank teller. Nowadays I guess a cashiers check is still in demand for big ticket items like vehicles but last time I got a car (via credit) it was all done by my digitally signing a bunch of stuff on my phone.
yeah here in ZA we've had futuristic banking since the 00s (straight-up USSD banking services were available), chip&pin have been around for probably a decade if not more
it did take a little while for NFC to roll out (probably because our banks are dicks and charge vendors for payment terminals, which many would bother not replacing while their existing ones work) but even that is well into "you can nfc-pay at shops in towns in the middle of nowhere"
afaik US banks are still working on the really, really hard problem of .... same-/next-day interbank payments. you know, that thing that most other places have figured out 2~3 decades ago? yeah
tbf I believe a contributing factor for US banks being stuck in the 1950s is regulation designed to prevent giant mergers. But I may be wrong.