Yep, still here. And yeah, it's been almost a year since I last updated. There really hasn't been much on the EMV front to update about, which is probably a good thing. Cards mainly just work. Granted, the US implementation is still not anywhere close to ideal (IMO, anyway), but I've come to terms with that.
A lot of the reason why I'm okay with it now is because contactless (which is what the rest of the world's been moving towards for a while now) is finally starting to get some use. It sounds weird celebrating "only" 28% of card present transactions using it, but then again, just a few years ago it really did seem like the US was simply never going to use it. And that was a pretty reasonable assumption, too. After all, we already tried it in the late 2000s--only for it to flop (at best) and downright contribute to cardholder reluctance to this day (at worst). It's easy to see an alternate timeline where the US just did QR instead (e.g. what China does) or even simply just continued inserting indefinitely. At least until everyone simply moved over to ordering everything online or something, anyway.
Anyway, I haven't had to mass add any stores in quite a while simply due to the high penetration of EMV at this point, so no list unlike with previous posts. I can say that Ralphs finally got contactless, though, so it's very possible the rest of Kroger will get the "contactless support" flag flipped in the near future. That pretty much just leaves Home Depot, Lowe's and Walmart, really, before one could make the argument that support is basically "universal"*.
* Given the continued prevalence of cashiers/servers running people's cards for them, I doubt the US will ever reach 100% merchant acceptance. But if it gets prevalent enough that those places just tap cards instead of inserting them, that's probably "good enough" for the card networks. Good luck to those who only have their phones on them (though I guess some QR web portal based system will end up becoming the de facto standard for those).
So yeah, we went a long time without an update again. However, this one is important.
It turns out we have a hard end of life for this website now: 2029. That's the date when Mastercards are no longer allowed to have a magnetic stripe at all. Not just "no longer required to", period (with minimal exceptions). Because of this, stores will increasingly begin having problems running cards in the several years prior to the cutoff, forcing whoever is still not EMV enabled by then to do whatever's necessary to make that happen.
However, that brings up the question of who exactly will be left by that point. I'm honestly not sure it'll be all that many places. As it is now, almost 80% of card present transactions are EMV. In my personal life, even, I go quite a long while before one of my cards gets swiped--even at gas pumps. These days, I can also go multiple days without needing to insert as contactless adoption at the merchant level is significantly improved even compared to a couple of years ago. (I'm a bit annoyed that we needed a pandemic and the subsequent loss of lives for that to happen, but that's a different subject.) Come to think of it, many of whoever's left may very well switch over even before 2027 simply to get contactless support the way user adoption's going.
What about the various aspects of a store's setup? This too is becoming less important over time. Quick Chip is pretty much a standard terminal feature in the US now, for one thing. (I recently got a Treecard debit card--which has offline PIN--but have had quite a hard time getting that PIN reset precisely due to QC. Plus, the two places I've found that still don't have it also don't seem to run issuer scripts, which makes me think that those either aren't sent over to cards anymore or Treecard made a mistake configuring the cards. I'm not fully sure on this yet.) Combined with restaurants as a group having decided not to do pay at the table and even many of the few PIN preferring cards switching over to signature preference, the important bits are now basically a) is EMV working at all and b) is contactless working.
So, will the website shut down? Probably not immediately. However, updates like this one will probably become less and less frequent over time, and I may eventually just make the website read-only. In the meantime, definitely continue to submit additions and suggestions for updates.
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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Sorry for the lack of an update in a while. Except for the gas pump EMV liability shift this past April, not much has really happened. Life is now finally getting to the point where it might be possible to check out local places again. On the other hand, though, EMV penetration is already pretty good; I'm not sure there's going to be many more stores to add, so it may be time to think of life beyond this site. Contactless still has a bit of life left, though (which is why there's the sister site)--plus there are still a few years where there should be activity on the gas pump side. We'll see in any case.
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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Let's just hope for a better 2021. Enough said.
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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Still here. The pandemic is still raging, unfortunately, despite efforts to try to pretend like nothing's wrong (which is a topic for another site). One of the few upsides is that people are actually realizing that contactless exists; usage has gone up dramatically since the beginning of the year. I just wish we didn't need hundreds of thousands of people dying to push us to it. After all, other countries were able to find reasons to adopt it that didn't involve mass death and possible long-term health issues.
As for the site itself, I fixed a display bug in the Recent Businesses list that occurred as a result of the use of the same code for both EMV Accepted Here and Contactless Accepted Here. (You may have noticed the former showing locations that are decidedly not gas stations showing up as "Yes" for that column when searching by name.) I also mass added all of the locations that were queued up over the last four months; while there wasn't much movement in terms of EMV enablement, there were at least several places that seemingly enabled contactless only because of the pandemic.
(BTW, Kroger--one of the biggest remaining holdouts--looks to actually be giving in. Currently only at QFC, but will likely be at their other brands as well once the bugs are worked out.)
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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
* Likely has had EMV for a while; only recently confirmed.
Sorry for the significant delay in posting. I'm sure most have heard about the novel new virus by now and the havoc it's wreaking on the world. Unfortunately this also means that mass updates will slow down significantly due to widespread store closures. I've gone through the majority of the updates that were in my queue (which will be listed below as usual).
On the upside, at least contactless usage is growing a lot faster now? Wish we didn't need a pandemic for that, though.
Anyway, please stay safe. And stay home as much as possible.
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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
Happy Holidays everyone! There haven't been many updates on the EMV front over the last few weeks, especially since stores tend not to update anything over this time period. However, there are still retailers gaining both chip and contactless, as well as new contactless cards coming to market. Visa in fact claimed that the goal of 100 million contactless cards for 2019 has been met and that an additional 200 million will be rolled out next year. In addition, tap to pay on the NYC subway continues to exceed expectations. It should be interesting to see the stats for overall contactless use next year to see the magnitude of the improvement.
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Since last update, these major stores and restaurants came online/were added:
* Has supported EMV for a while, only recently been able to add all remaining locations.
Welcome to contactlessacceptedhere.com! As you might have noticed, this site uses the same database as its sister site, emvacceptedhere.com. The main difference is that this site behaves as though you checked the "show contactless" option and does not show non-contactless supporting businesses. In addition, this site will allow you to add contactless supporting businesses that do not support the chip (though I expect the number that fall in that category is pretty small at this point).
Anyway, please feel free to report any issues with listings by clicking on the listing's "report" link. Additional things that are coming soon include: