Re: Banks new requirement....

The requirement has been there from the start, but I was only asked to do it a couple of times when I first got a contactless card and have never been asked since.

SteveW

You are talking contactless? That would be a bit hard on a bus! Brian

Not in London (and probably other cities now).

Tim

Brian Gaff \(Sofa 2\) snipped-for-privacy@bluey> You are talking contactless? That would be a bit hard on a bus! > Brian

Why?

Contactless payments on buses are widespread. And would be very convenient if ever I needed to pay. :-)

But are they in real-time and if so, do they give the option to insert the card and put in the PIN if you have reached your bank's limit for contactless transactions? You'd be bit annoyed if you were on your way to work, had your card refused and had no other form of payment on you otherwise!

SteveW

There is equally no facility for chip and pin at stations which accept contactless cards. Such use of a contactless cards in London at least is really nothing like like buying a coffee or a sandwich. For tubes and trains at least TfL don't know what the journey will cost. So - at least as regard the initial system - when you touched in there was no deduction from your account. TfL made a "Zero Value" transaction and checked - locally - that they accepted the card for travel. That "touch" was reported to the back office system. It was there, at the end of the day, that they looked at all the travel in the billing period, worked out the fares and debited the account with the /total/ due.

Up til now individual banks have set the transaction frequency but a new EU rule specifies the frequency for all and it is regular (ten I think). This makes t easier for card/phone thieves to know how many times they can use a stolen card before it is likely to ask for a pin.

...if they know how many contactless purchases have been made before they nick it?

And the PIN's required after five contactless payments in a row or such payments totalling ?150.

I?m not sure how ?they? determine when to do a check but certainly it isn?t a new thing. I noticed the first transaction abroad on a given trip seems to require it but, after that, it hasn?t been needed- although we do tend to mix using ?contact less? and normal transactions on that card so perhaps it automatically verifies all is well. The card I use in the UK contactless I almost never use for normal transactions and can?t recall ever needing to verify it other than initially.