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Mastercard wants to speed up chip and pin transactions with new tech in card readers

Mastercard wants to speed up chip and pin transactions with new tech in card readers

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Less time in the checkout line

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Image: Mastercard

On Friday, Mastercard announced that it is partnering with payment processing companies Verifone and Global Payments to help speed up chip and pin transactions at stores by incorporating its M/Chip Fast technology into checkout terminals.

While chip and pin cards are widely used in Europe, American consumers and retailers have been slow to accept them. Retailers were supposed to implement chip readers two years ago, but still lag behind on deploying and activating terminals for customers to use. The transaction can also take several long seconds to complete, which can seem like an eternity when you have a line forming behind you.

Companies have been trying to shave seconds off of the transactions

Thus, companies have been focusing on speeding up those transactions. Last year, Square announced that it shaved about a second off of the transaction time with its reader, while Mastercard introduced its M/Chip Fast technology, which “prioritizes the parts of transactions that are critical to security,” and takes about the same amount of time as that of a magnetic strip transaction.

With this partnership, Mastercard is aiming to get its technology into the point of sale terminals that a number of retailers use in their checkout lines to speed up the wait time. The companies will focus on implementing it in places where customers are accustomed to moving quickly, such as fast food restaurants and grocery stores. Speeding up the transaction time should make the chip cards easier to use, and will hopefully speed up their long-delayed implementation.