Author Topic: Contactless card account protection...  (Read 3721 times)

ian

Re: Contactless card account protection...
« Reply #25 on: 06 September, 2019, 11:59:19 am »
I have no issues with contactless being a payment option as long as it is an option. Waving my watch over a payment pad really is the most convenient thing rather than having to cart a wallet around or faff with phones and stuff. I'm not bothered about being tracked, I'm not that interesting (and I work for an analytics company, so your data pays my salary).

Physically stealing and/or cloning cards is a lot more profitable and seems to be the near-exclusive mode of card fraud. Certainly, it's the only one that's happened to me (and several times, mostly in the US as they still practice the wandering-off-with-your-card). I've never been out of pocket for any of this and banks are getting fairly savvy to fraudulent transactions. I can't say I worry about any of this. It's actually less stressful not carrying a wallet since I don't have to worry about losing the entire caboodle (I do carry a back-up £20 usually).

I think the last time I got cash out of an ATM was back in June and it's still in my wallet.

Re: Contactless card account protection...
« Reply #26 on: 06 September, 2019, 12:37:35 pm »
I rarely use cash too. I usually do at the barbers, but don't need to - and today I've forgotten my "tip" £1 coin (yes, my barbers really is that cheap!), so card it will be.  And the local gift shop actively prefers contactless - quite possibly as a result of all the banks in Tring closing down, leaving nowhere with a night safe. Plus with the rise of the like of Paypal terminals it's relatively easy for the market traders to take cards too ('though most still prefer cash...).
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Contactless card account protection...
« Reply #27 on: 06 September, 2019, 01:15:02 pm »
Ultimately, this tracking stuff would seem like a stopgap until someone manages to make facial recognition that works, even with people who aren't white men.  At which point we're all doomed.

The Handmaids Tale scenario (where they switch off all[1] the women's bank accounts in a future cashless society, not sure if that bit made it to the telly version) is dramatic, but a decent clusterfuck of a systems outage would seem to be a greater risk.  Mind you, a fair number of shops don't seem to be able to take cash without working EPOS systems (and even if they did, their JIT supply chain wouldn't work properly), so maybe cash isn't actually a mitigation?


[1] This isn't entirely realistic, given that it's almost impossible to exist as a woman in the modern western world without being misgendered (or mis-marital-statused) by database programmers' default assumptions from time to time.

FifeingEejit

  • Not Small
Re: Contactless card account protection...
« Reply #28 on: 06 September, 2019, 01:19:31 pm »
This pisses me off so much I can't find the words to express just how pissed off I am. We have a perfectly servicable way of making payments with bank* cards that doesn't require people to go and buy _extra_ fucking crap to stop NFC cards being jemmied open by crims just because a bearded hipster wanker high on some organic herbal thought it would be all "wooo" and "Harry Potter" to make payments with a "magic wand".  If ever meet him (and I bet it was a bloke) he is a _dead_ man.

*Travel cards are different kettle of shit.

There are a lot of people in tech who don't spend enough time asking "Should we do this?" rather than "can we do this?"

The move to contactless for small payments is driven by a necessity to speed up transactions. If you can take payment from 35 seconds per customer (Put card in, wiggle it, make contact, type in pin, wait for validation, take it out, put it away, etc...) to 5 seconds per customer, it doesn't sound like much. But over 120 customers, that's an hour saved, or rather, you can process x more transactions per hour. Which means you can have less people on the checkouts as the through put of each checkout goes up. etc...

Many contactless transactions still involve an online check, even though banks have the option of allowing all/x in y or no offline transcations on the cards.

One of the primary targets of contactless was small businesses who were still working cash only; despite the transport and banking costs of cash compared to mag strip transactions cash was cheaper; chip and pin reduced this a bit as fraud costs in the network were expected to reduce, but still the cost exceeds cash, contactless on the other hand was aiming to be deliberately priced to be cheaper than banking cash for all transactions.

For this reason any business that takes card payments but still sets a minimum transaction probably never banks their float and safe and so are advertising their suitability for robbery.

Eurocard/Mastercard and Visa make their money from banks and merchants so their technological developments are rarely primarily aimed at being of benefit to the consumer.


Note: This is all from my fading memory of the commercial documentation from EMV back when Chip and Pin was a french thing.

Davef

Re: Contactless card account protection...
« Reply #29 on: 11 September, 2019, 10:32:14 pm »
I rarely use cash too.
Not been to rural Wales recently then.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Re: Contactless card account protection...
« Reply #30 on: 12 September, 2019, 08:17:32 am »
I rarely use cash too.
Not been to rural Wales recently then.


Never, as it happens.
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

andytheflyer

  • Andytheex-flyer.....
Re: Contactless card account protection...
« Reply #31 on: 13 September, 2019, 02:13:32 pm »
I rarely use cash too.
Not been to rural Wales recently then.

I recall, a few years after decimalisation, a Bethesda pub giving change in £SD, having tendered £.pp.  Was through Bethesda this week and the pub seems to have gone.  Obviously run out of cash.

Wombat

  • Is it supposed to hurt this much?
Re: Contactless card account protection...
« Reply #32 on: 15 September, 2019, 12:59:03 pm »
I rarely use cash too.
Not been to rural Wales recently then.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

To my surprise, having moved to rural Powys a couple of years ago, I've found that shops in pretty well every village do indeed take contactless, it saves them the impossible task of banking cash ('cos there are no banks in easy reach).  Of course it does involve having some form of data connection, which can be an issue thanks to BT/Openreach's tardiness, despite being financed by the Welsh Govt and the EU.
Wombat

Tim Hall

  • Victoria is my queen
Re: Contactless card account protection...
« Reply #33 on: 15 September, 2019, 02:44:07 pm »
I rarely use cash too.
Not been to rural Wales recently then.

I recall, a few years after decimalisation, a Bethesda pub giving change in £SD, having tendered £.pp.  Was through Bethesda this week and the pub seems to have gone.  Obviously run out of cash.
The Douglas Arms. Last time I was in there they quoted prices  £sd but used new money. Can't see anything on teh interwebs to suggest they've closed though.
There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can
"overhaul" it, or you can ride it.  (Jerome K Jerome)

FifeingEejit

  • Not Small
Re: Contactless card account protection...
« Reply #34 on: 15 September, 2019, 03:11:05 pm »