Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

The obvious solution: Only offer customers a single slot to put the card in—say, a highly visible slot on top of the PIN pad, not one hidden underneath. The customer slides the card into the slot. The slot clamps it, so it can’t be pulled out immediately. A sensor checks for contactless capability. Electrical contacts touch the spot where an EMV chip would be, to see if anybody’s home there. And a moving magstripe reader rolls down to read that data.

Then the POS has all the information it needs to choose among contactless, contact EMV, magstripe, credit, debit, PIN, signature, other authentication and—in the case of PayPal or other alternative payment schemes—even different transaction processors. And once the transaction is done, the PIN pad unclamps the card and the customer gets it back.

How complicated is this for customers? Not very—putting a card into a slot that holds it is how many bank ATMs have worked for years. How hard is it on cashiers? Their biggest problem would be explaining which way the card is supposed to go into the slot, which is already the main thing cashiers have to explain to customers who are swiping. (Right after that on the list is telling customers they have to swipe again, because they swiped too fast, too slowly or held the card the wrong way.)

Actually, adding multiple magstripe readers could make it possible for a single-slot PIN pad to read the card no matter how it’s oriented, but that would add cost. And the PIN pad might not even have to double up on NFC sensors if it’s designed so the sensor that reads the card inside the PIN pad can also read a card (or phone) that’s tapped against the POS device.

There are potential PCI advantages to putting all the readers inside the PIN pad, too. For example, a device with an exposed swipe slot makes it relatively easy for a thief to add and remove a card skimmer. With all-internal readers, compromising a device would be harder. A thief would either have to use an external skimmer that’s easier to spot or actually open up the POS device—and if that’s possible, any PIN pad is hopelessly compromised anyway.

Chains will have to support magstripes for years, especially because giftcards, PayPal and other alternate payment schemes will keep using them. Meanwhile, Chip-and-PIN and contactless have been pretty complete non-starters in the U.S., thanks largely to the way our PIN pads are designed. If retailers ever want to get beyond the stripe—and if Visa and MasterCard ever want to get them beyond the stripe—customers have to have a painless, reasonably familiar way to insert a payment card, but one that doesn’t let them swipe and, in fact, doesn’t give them any choice at all.

Otherwise, they’ll never change their behavior—and magstripes will live forever.