r/AskReddit • • 9h ago

"those little differences" Americans who visited Europe, what was surprisingly different for you?

333 Upvotes

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u/thalassicus 7h ago

You never hand your credit card to a waiter or merchant who then takes it away to run it. They bring the device to you which seems much more secure.

168

u/D0ntC4llMeShirley 5h ago

America handles card payments like it’s the 1990s

48

u/Ok-Sandwich-364 4h ago

I was on an Amtrak Train in 2018 and they still had those carbon copy credit card imprint machines. Felt so weird watching them take a copy of my card and then it took days for the charge to actually show up on my account.

10

u/poorboychevelle 2h ago

Those only work if your card still has embossed numbers, feel like my card hasn't had those for well over a decade

6

u/counterfitster 4h ago

They finally caught up to the rest of the country by 2022 at least (though I remember them using actual terminals in 2010 too)

3

u/Dundragon3030 3h ago

Lack of phone signal on the train tracks means they had to use the older methods.

5

u/jk_arundel 1h ago

Yeah but on many airlines I can use my credit card while in flight!

4

u/neverbeenbetter190 3h ago

Wow as a tourist I would have loved seeing that in person for the first and only time in my life! πŸ˜€

2

u/flyingcircusdog 1h ago

This is just a weird quick. 95% of American card machines have tap to pay.

2

u/Mcoov 1h ago

Yeah but I'd say that only became widespread after about 2018. Europe was doing tap-to-pay as far back as 2007.

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u/flyingcircusdog 1h ago

That's true, but OP claimed it's really far behind.