QOTW: Do you use contactless payments?

[Nightfire]

*a year , #whoops

[Saracen999]

Even then you have to consider the massive false-positive rate.

At the moment. But like all technology, we are currently very early in the development curve. Compare an 8088/8086 to a current Intel (or AMD) CPU. Or early 640x480 pixel digicams to current models (at 1/4 or less of the price), or a Deskjet 700C to any moxern colour inkjet, or ..... etc.

Realtime facial re is early stage, but a decade or two back, much of what NCIC does daily was sci-fi.

[Saracen999]

Hmm.... so plastic bank notes embedded with biometric thumbprint scanners, so they can follow the note out the door, down the street, around the country, into your hand, through the hands of that pimp to the hands of his drug dealer, up the chain of supply to the regional Kingpin, then into the hands of his mum (Mrs Miggins at No. 14) when he pays her his rent, and via the milkman all the way back to the government offices again....

Well, we'll know to watch out, when banknotes become plasticised...

Shhh. They might not have thought of that.

/invests in decent supply of touch-sensitive gloves.

[jonyroda97]

I'm from Portugal and we have an app that is only used here called 'MBWay' (the likes of google pay, samsung pay aren't supported but applePay starts to appear in some banks).

MBWay is used to create virtual credit cards (to be used in online payments and they have a limit determined by the user) or we can use NFC or the camera to read QR Codes of the payment machine to pay the things (in an iPhone only camera is supported because Apple blocks the NFC use).

I used the App a lot but there are 2 things very annoying.

One is when the terminal has the symbol that supports MBway but it doesn't work saying on the app that is not yet supported on that machine...

Other is, on my local McDonald's, where I know both contactless and MBway are supported but when going on McDrive they don't let me choose to pay that way insisting on me giving them the card to insert it to make me insert the pin. When confronting the employee he said that he had an order to make it that way because they worked with under the 20€ limit payments and it wasn't secure. I see where they come from but the user decides to have that risk or not with the cards for the convenience of being fast and with the phone you have the option to let it pay under 20€ or having to confirm with fingerprint/pin always.
So it is, always, an option of the user to be less secure for the convenince of being fast.

[Saracen999]

I'm from Portugal .....

So it is, always, an option of the user to be less secure for the convenince of being fast.

If it was like that here (UK) where the user sets the convenience/security level, I'd have no problem with NFC-equipped cards, because I could just turn it off. Tried that, didn't work.

But, at least in my experience, it isn't user-settable (here). Unless anyone else has had more luck with it than me.

I cancelled several credit card accounts because there is no option to turn off NFC for those that don't want the liability, and when they replaced my older non-NFC cards with a new card they automatically sent NFC cards and even on me contacting them an explicitly requesting a non-NFC card, they would neither supply one, nor disable (at their end) the NFC option.

Their attitude was, if you have our card, it will be contactless, it will be active, and it will be configured how we want it. To which my response was that given that, I don't want the card so close the account. One call-centre lady actually said "I've had a lot of people do that".

So I might be bucking the trend, but I'm certainly not alone. The risk/convenience balance is a personal decision for everyone, but for me, the convenience doesn't justify the risk.

[DanceswithUnix]

So I might be bucking the trend, but I'm certainly not alone. The risk/convenience balance is a personal decision for everyone, but for me, the convenience doesn't justify the risk.

Whilst I wouldn't be personally interested (as shown above, my utter hate of loose change overrides the chance of someone getting past the metallic lining of my wallet to skim my cards) I have to wonder just how hard it would be to set up the Bank of Tin-Foil Luddites (given that all supermarkets etc have their own credit cards) with high end credit card chips (yes, there are differences in encryption levels) and optional NFC.

It is interesting to look back to the time of the failed Mondex cash replacement system (was that the early 90's?? , eek feeling old now) where the user could plug their card into a pocket device and unlock how much they wanted available on the card. The idea was that if you were doing a transaction for £35 then you could unlock that much and no more before handing the card over, on a per-transaction basis if you so desired. Or ISTR you could unlock £20, effectively turning it into a £20 note.

[Saracen999]

i doubt it would be hard, at all, DwU.

I think it's a case of "won't" not "can't".

It's perhaps worth bearing in mind that if I (and millions of others) all buy our coffees, etc, on credit cards, the card companies tyoically get 2-6%. If we all use cash, they get 0%.

There are some companids I use (notably, wholesalers) that will take Debit cards, cash or evem Amex charge, but no credit cards at all. My bet is that because they are keeping prices low (and they are pretty keen prices) they won't absorb that percentage the credit card companies fleece us for.

I have an inate dislike anyway for the entire principle of credit cards. Having had a nasty experience a couple of decades ago where xudden, unexpected illness caused my income (as self-employed) to go from, well, let's say "healthy" to more or less zero, overnight, and for a couple of years, an easily-affordable (based on projected income) suddenly became a njghtmare. Why? Because I succumbed to the "cinvenience" of credit cards.

Never again. Now, I only use credit cards where either unavoidable, or where there's an extremely good reason, and never, ever, ever unless I already have the available funds to, in my best Marti Lewis voice, "pay it off, IN FULL" immediately the bill comes in.

I had a narrow brush will real trouble but scraped past. I've seen others where they weren't so lucky, And there's been some startling figures in recent years about the level of general indebtedness, most of it unsecured (i.e. mainly credit card debt) and it's huge. A very large proportion of the population face debt levels that are utterly unsustainable if, like me, some unanticipated event hits earning ability, and at the same time, a huge proportion have insufficient savings to last even a single month.

Why? IMHO, in large part, because it's so damn easy to spend now, worry later.

I blame credit cards in large part, and the convenience of contactless just rsmos it uo another notch. It's too easy, to spend £5 here, and there, and everywhere, and not realise how it adds up

A friend of mine did that recently. Surprised at his growing credit card bill he look at what he'd been spending. The significant sums (major purchases, flights, hotels, etc) he'd mentally budgeted for and kept a running balance in his head. The shock was ib how those coffees, cakes, etc, added up.

Now, he can afford it. He's a multiple-property-owning retired CEO anc could afford to drien himself in a coffee lake. But it was a shock at how those mini-payments added up so fast, to several hundred pounds because it was so "convenient", so fast that 'paying' was pretty much a thoughtless process. That's all very well if people, like him, can just pay the bill without batting an eyelid but, as those burgeoning debt levels and absence of savings figures demonstrate, most people can't.

And if you can't, not only are the credit card companies getting their 2-6%-ish of the coffee price, but if people let the balance build, that's where the card companies really gouge them for interest. Let it get too far out of hand and that way lies debt collectors, bailiffs and even bankruptcy proceedings.

It's all part of the credit-card agenda. Profiteering and financial control that they can't exploit when we use cash.

And I didn't even mention pricacy. Ummmm ..... ooops,

[Ttaskmaster]

Shhh. They might not have thought of that.

Of course they have... As with everything, it's only a matter of available budget.

[DanceswithUnix]

It's all part of the credit-card agenda. Profiteering and financial control that they can't exploit when we use cash.

When shops pay cash into a bank they pay similar percentage to credit card charges as a "handling fee". Hence if you are using a fixed cost debit card you get offered cash back to unload the stuff from the shop.

But my debit card was the first card I got that was contactless. Actually took a long time for my credit card to catch up. And yes, I haven't had credit card debt since leaving university. It is set to auto pay off in full at the end of every month, credit card companies skim off plenty before they charge through the nose for interest payments so they still seem to like me.