Ditch the Chip – Here’s How Much Time You Can Save By Using Apple Pay

If you don’t have one, you’ve probably seen them around: those new debit or credit cards with a chip. And you probably know that — rather than the convenience of swiping — it takes much longer to process a transaction with them.

Ostensibly, these new chip-outfitted cards are more secure than standard credit or debit cards. The technology, which has become a standard across the globe, is meant to increase protection against fraud — even if US merchants have been slower to adopt the new format, according to Citibank.

But, if you’ve ever used one before, you know how long they take — especially when compared to the near instantaneous transaction and processing time of an NFC-based payment system like Apple Pay. According to a survey conducted by merchant service provider Harbortouch, current chip card transactions average anywhere from 7 to 10 seconds — obviously, with the extreme being much longer.

And nearly four times as many consumers are more concerned about faster transaction times rather than increased card security, according to CNN Money. And for good reason. We all live busy lives, and even a seemingly insignificant extra few seconds can add up in the long run.

To illustrate that point, let’s compare these new chip-equipped cards to Apple Pay. Even if you only used Apple Pay once a day for a month — instead of a chip card — you’d save around 5 minutes at the end of 30 days. That’s a whole extra hour at the end of a year — and that’s just using Harbortouch’s average transaction time estimate, not the possible extremes.

That doesn’t seem like much time, sure. But keep in mind that we probably average more than one purchase a day. That’s a whole extra hour a year that could be spent doing something productive, rather than waiting for a single purchase to process.

Have you ditched the chip? Has Apple Pay proven to be faster than your chip-based credit card?
Let us know in the comments!