Is Google Wallet or NFC a substitute for chip and pin?

[fuzzybabybunny]

I'm sick of having US cards that don't have PINs and don't have a chip that I can tap onto a reader. When I'm traveling internationally some merchants don't accept cards without a pin and some don't do the card swipe thing.

I don't know much about Google Wallet. Does it allow me to take my existing cards and just use my phone like a chip and pin card that I can tap?

 

[gorcorps]

I'm sick of having US cards that don't have PINs and don't have a chip that I can tap onto a reader. When I'm traveling internationally some merchants don't accept cards without a pin and some don't do the card swipe thing.

I don't know much about Google Wallet. Does it allow me to take my existing cards and just use my phone like a chip and pin card that I can tap?

Yes, as long as the merchant has the reader for it and has it set up correctly. I'm not sure how it's been adopted outside the US, but it's been slow to come to the US. Not something I'd rely on anyway.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Yes, as long as the merchant has the reader for it and has it set up correctly. I'm not sure how it's been adopted outside the US, but it's been slow to come to the US. Not something I'd rely on anyway.

So the reader for the Google NFC tapping is the same reader as the ones used for directly tapping credit cards?

 

[Dulanic]

Almost all cards should be chip by October, so at least that's helpful. Not sure about international NFC acceptance.

 

[quikah]

So the reader for the Google NFC tapping is the same reader as the ones used for directly tapping credit cards?

Seems like you might have this confused. Chip and tapping are 2 separate things. Chip cards are not necessarily tap enabled. All of the chip cards I have received are contact chips meaning you need to insert them into the reader to use the chip (which I haven't been able to do at anyplace yet).

I don't know if the NFC readers are the same as the contactless CC readers. I would assume so. All the Apple Pay enabled places I have encountered DO have slots to insert chip enabled cards though.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Seems like you might have this confused. Chip and tapping are 2 separate things. Chip cards are not necessarily tap enabled. All of the chip cards I have received are contact chips meaning you need to insert them into the reader to use the chip (which I haven't been able to do at anyplace yet).

I don't know if the NFC readers are the same as the contactless CC readers. I would assume so. All the Apple Pay enabled places I have encountered DO have slots to insert chip enabled cards though.

Oh I see. So we have three different ways of reading a card, and a card *could* have all three of these built in:

- magnetic swipe
- reading the little chip thing on contact (insert into a slot)
- tapping (which is NFC, but may not be the same as the Google Wallet NFC)

And pin is just an extra security measure that the rest of the world has already adopted but the US has not.