Edit: Forget what I'm saying. I may be misremembering things. Batch is a thing, but maybe not the reason why chip and pin is fast in the EU.
Like I say elsewhere this is very likely a regional thing, having to do with regulations that either require the transaction to be completed in one go, or permit it to be stored in a batch to be processed overnight.
I live in the UK and travel around the EU a bit (France, Italy, Greece, Belgium recently) and I've never noticed chip-and-pin being slow in any way. That's because in most of those countries at least, as far as I can tell, transactions are stored and processed in overnight batches instead of being sent online to be dealt with immediately, which may take a long time depending on the network connection etc.
From what I understand, most places outside the EU don't do batch, they send the transaction online to be completed immediately. Which can take quite a bit longer.
It's fast in my country (EU member). Like no-more-than-five-seconds fast. Most of the time even faster. And it has nothing to do with batches, because if I check my balance in my banking app I can already see the transaction there right after checkout.
Maybe infrastructure connecting PoSes and banks sucks in US?
It's been a while since I worked for an EMV vendor and I didn't remember that very clearly, but sometimes transactions are handled entirely offline. It depends on what card you have and where you're shopping (or, more specifically, your card issuer and the transaction acquirer, who determines the settings on the pinpad).
The card and the pinpad together make a decision about whether to send the transaction online or keep it offline and this decision may involve the connection speed of the device and the amount of money you spend.
So, in some cases you might check your account and notice that the money has not been taken out yet. Or you might not even check because the amount you spent was very low.
Obviously, if the connection speed is high enough there's no point in staying offline, so you'll always see your balance changing pretty much instantly. But, like I say, this depends on where you're shopping, what you're buying and what card you're using.
> but sometimes transactions are handled entirely offline
It depends. Some readers are set to accept offline payments for NFC for sure. Reason being that they only sell small items (lunch boxes and stuff) and an offline payment is instant. However in most places you can only do three offline payments before an online payment is forced.
Like I say elsewhere this is very likely a regional thing, having to do with regulations that either require the transaction to be completed in one go, or permit it to be stored in a batch to be processed overnight.
I live in the UK and travel around the EU a bit (France, Italy, Greece, Belgium recently) and I've never noticed chip-and-pin being slow in any way. That's because in most of those countries at least, as far as I can tell, transactions are stored and processed in overnight batches instead of being sent online to be dealt with immediately, which may take a long time depending on the network connection etc.
From what I understand, most places outside the EU don't do batch, they send the transaction online to be completed immediately. Which can take quite a bit longer.