Square wants to make your chip card less annoying

Square knows that chip credit cards are annoying. That's why the payment company is trying to cut down the time you have to wait for your chip to process, at least when you're paying at a Square vendor.

Square has cut down the transaction speed for its contactless and chip reader from 5.7 to 4.2 seconds, it announced Monday. The company points out that that's 25 percent faster, but it's still aiming to get the time down to three seconds in the long run.

That 4.2 seconds is the time from dipping a credit or debit card into the chip reader to when the transaction is complete.

Chip cards use EMV, or Europay Mastercard Visa, technology.

"Square is in a unique position to make EMV card processing faster," Square hardware lead Jesse Dorogusker wrote in a blog post. "First, we build our own hardware, so we use custom-designed components to maximize efficiency resulting in better performance. And second, we build the software too: as one cohesive solution, we can make sure all aspects of processing a payment integrate seamlessly, and prioritize for speed and ease of use."

Chip cards have been around for a while, but US credit companies began to transition to EMV technology about a year ago. Chip cards, especially those that require a PIN, are supposed to be more secure than traditional credit cards that pay through a swipe. Visa and Mastercard put more liability for counterfeit cards on businesses that did not accept EMV cards last October, encouraging the switch.

The transition has frustrated some consumers and businesses between customers fumbling with the new technology and the legitimate increase in time it takes to process a transaction. Chip cards often take between eight and 12 seconds to process.

Square can't help every customer use a chip card more efficiently, but it is trying to solve the second problem. The company, which shares CEO Jack Dorsey with Twitter, says that 75 percent of the cards processed through its platform now contain a chip, compared to 40 percent a year ago.

Visa said in April that it was working to cut down transaction time for its chip cards. The credit card provider issued new software to allow customers to dip their cards for two seconds and remove them before the transaction finished processing on the cashier's side.