New credit cards may shift unauthorized-transaction liabilities to the holder
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008
Notice how you’re being encouraged to use credit for small purchases now, and there;s no requirement to sign anything? It’s the new money. Observe the past century’s de-evolution of money away from an objective standard of value: gold (holds its own value) -> fiat paper (where the state taxes the populace through inflation) -> credit (where you are directly taxed by the central credit-issuing agencies). Next, banks will be securitizing people’s credit card debt and selling that through derivative transactions, if they aren’t already. Anything to consolidate the world financial system. So what we need isn’t a new cryptographic pin chip, what we need is real money again.
Ellen Roseman, Toronto Star
November 2, 2008
If you ask Stephen Harding about his new chip-enabled CIBC Aerogold Infinite Visa card, he has mixed reviews. Many retailers don’t know about the change in technology, he says.
He was in a restaurant that had no remote wireless terminals to bring to his table. He had to stand behind the bar, trying to make his card work at a hard-wired terminal.
“The transaction failed and I used my MasterCard instead,” he says.
Harding is not alone. Some consumers are struggling to use the new credit cards, which are just starting to arrive in the mail, with the new payment terminals.
This major change will affect millions of cardholders over the next few years. It’s designed to combat fraud, a problem that financial institutions keep under wraps.
Soon, you’ll have an embedded computer chip in your card that is virtually impossible to duplicate. The chip works with a personal identification number used to verify the transaction.
(more…)