> Those who have used the systems in Europe may wonder why it has taken
>> so long for them to show up here.
>The article missed the key fact that most Visa cards in Europe are debit
>cards, and have embedded chips that track the available amount. So the
>machines there have historically worked offline, doing the transaction
>with the chip in the card, then reporting the transactions to the bank in
> a batch at the end of the day, probably by plugging the machine into a
>phone line or, back when phones didn't work so great, maybe even taking
>the machine to the bank.
Huh? Hertz has used these to expedite rental car checkin for probably at least 10 years!