
Supermarket sues banks over chip card shift, says it lost $10K in 4.5 months - protomyth
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/03/supermarket-sues-banks-over-chip-card-shift-says-it-lost-10k-in-4-5-months/
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st3v3r
As it turns out, they actually have a valid reason for this. If the merchant
has stated that they're ready for certification, I don't see why they should
be held liable when the certification company has been dragging it's ass.

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rewrew
And they were ready months in advance, too.

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joezydeco
_" Tellingly, nothing Milam’s Market could have done—short of making the
business-crippling decision to stop accepting Visa cards—could have prevented
this outcome,” the complaint added_

Is that really true? You can't ask for photo ID, a second signature, a pre-
verification of the charge against credit limits?

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supercanuck
>All the networks allow a merchant to ask for identification. MasterCard and
Visa, however, explicitly prohibit retailers from requiring an ID to accept a
properly signed card.

Source: [http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/can-retailers-
as...](http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/can-retailers-ask-id-with-
credit_card-1282.php)

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joezydeco
That seems like a _huge_ loophole that the merchant can use in their lawsuit.

On the other hand, "properly signed" still means that the merchant can compare
signatures on the card and receipt, right?

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eru
Forging signatures is trivial.

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justin66
Not to mention, the signature space on the back of a card is so tiny that we
just expect a person's real signature to look rather different.

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x5n1
Class action suite. The amount is not the issue. The lawyers looking to make
millions is. 10k is a write off for most grocery stores.

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throwaway_xx9
From what I've read, the fancy credit card terminal that was deployed
nationwide is actually not compatible with European-style chip-and-pin, which
will be the next version of credit card standard. So billions were spend for
nothing.

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terinjokes
The hardware is compatible, but the software isn't. From what I understand,
the card enumerates what applets it has installed and the POS picks the first
one it knows how to interact with.

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techdragon
The mess of bad hardware, software and UX really makes the acronym POS so
appropriate ;-)

