A small observation: in France,
purchases made by credit card are completed without the card ever leaving your
sight. Be it in a restaurant or a shop, the system feels more secure than the
ways we transact business with credit cards in the states. In France, all of
the restaurant servers have hand-held credit card swipe machines. They bring
you the bill and, when you are ready to pay, they return with a wireless credit
card swipe machine. You watch the restaurant server swipe the card and generate
the printout(s) which s/he gives to you along with your credit card. (Retail
shops operate much as they do in the states with credit card swipe machines
located at the check-out counter.)
Giving my credit card to a
server in an American restaurant might explain my heretofore undefined
discomfort as I watch the server disappear with my credit card only to return X
minutes later with a print-out to review and sign.
As we grow more concerned
about identify theft, it seems like we should have the same wireless credit
card machines in the US.
– Or, maybe my anxiety is misplaced and I should be more concerned about
wireless data transmission and hackers???
