I haven't used my card in an ATM machine for 6 months

[ursus arctos]

Aren't card issuers on the hook for such eventualities, at least for 24 hours or so?

Or is the absence of such basic consumer protection another "Brexit dividend"?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Seriously. Wow. What a thing to get annoyed about.

I suggest that you either don't get a contactless card or immediately cut up the one you currently own in order to avoid any of the pitfalls that you're worried about.

Why would I do that? Clearly I am happy with the current level of potential risk. I don't understand why it's been arbitrarily doubled today. Maybe you work somewhere where risk doubling over a limit you're suddely uncomfortable with is just, you know, "whatevers!".

[Nocturnal Submission]

Well, I'm OK with the risk but you're obviously not, so cut up your card.

I'm trying to assuage your anxieties here.

[caja-dglh]

So increasing the contactless payment thing to a hundred quid doubles your exposure to loss or theft. Or mugging. Ta, mate. I guess the threat of having someone instantly nick around five hundred quid off you doesn't register when you've married a billionaire, but it would fuck me off.

Around my way, if you get mugged you aren't particularly worried about the contactless payments exposure.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Aren't card issuers on the hook for such eventualities, at least for 24 hours or so?

Or is the absence of such basic consumer protection another "Brexit dividend"?

According to my bank, as long as you let them know that your card has been lost or stolen as soon as you discover it, you're protected against its fraudulent use.

[DCI Harry Batt]

100 quid sounds good to me, contactless roolz.

Of course I dont actually go out spending money anyway, so yeah.

[ad hoc]

I have to say I don't really get why this is a big deal, why does anyone care? Here the contactless limit is 100 Lei, which is about ?20. If the bill is over that I just have to add my pin. Why is this some form of massive burden?

[San Bernardhinault]

I think people were freaking out several months ago because using the pin meant you were contacting a keypad that others had touched, spat on, whatever, and could get covid from it so finally started using contactless. We now all know that there's almost no infection from surfaces, so it shouldn't be an issue but I guess people got used to using contactless and found it easier.

[willie1foot]

Deffo part of what made me middle class, as a kid, the curry thing.

My mum used to occasionally make disgusting boil-in-the-bag Vesta 'curry'... does that mean we were middle class or just trying hard to be?

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

I was a long hold-out/late adopter of contactless, largely for the reasons Rogin mentions. I just wasn't comfortable with the exposure to a thief or mugger merrily spending away with my card. But once I adopted it, of course I got hooked by the convenience, and since the pandemic arrived I've been a huge fan.

[jwdd27]

It certainly gets customers out of the shop quicker, it does delay things when people forget their PIN, or don't press hard enough on one of the digits, or put the card in upside down, or yank it out before it's processed. The banks have all sorts of safeguards in place for unusual or repeat purchases, especially two in a row which are 40-45 quid, i.e. near the limit.

Contactless via my PIN/fingerprint protected phone is more secure than card if you're worried about losing your wallet (and ApplePay have already upped the limit if you have one of their gadgets).

[DCI Harry Batt]

It's not a big deal at all, nor is typing in a pin a massive burden. Raising the limit's just a handy bit of minor hassle removal.

My mum used to occasionally make disgusting boil-in-the-bag Vesta 'curry'... does that mean we were middle class or just trying hard to be?

We went to the Indian restaurant (only one of, in Crawley in the 1970s FFS). Exotic or what?

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

My mum used to occasionally make disgusting boil-in-the-bag Vesta 'curry'... does that mean we were middle class or just trying hard to be?

In the late 70s if I asked my mother what was for tea and she said "Chinese" what she meant was boiled rice, with those fried crispy noodles on top, lashed with soy sauce. If my daughter is in need of a laugh she'll say "go on dad, tell me again how old you were when you first had a takeaway pizza" (nearly 14, but even that was an isolated incident because my brother knew the guy who owned the shop).

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

We now all know that there's almost no infection from surfaces.... .

I don't think that is a universal understanding, at least not over here.

[San Bernardhinault]

I don't think that is a universal understanding, at least not over here.

I think lots of businesses have kept cleaning as a form of "security theatre" to be seen to be doing something. But there seem to be very, very few observed cases of fomite transmission

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00251-4

Hundreds of studies of COVID-19 transmission have been published since the pandemic began, yet there is thought to be only one that reports transmission through a contaminated surface, by what it termed the snot–oral route.

[anton pulisov]

I think people were freaking out several months ago because using the pin meant you were contacting a keypad that others had touched, spat on, whatever, and could get covid from it so finally started using contactless. We now all know that there's almost no infection from surfaces, so it shouldn't be an issue but I guess people got used to using contactless and found it easier.

Surely the solution is just to have voice activated pin pads.

[caja-dglh]

I don't think that is a universal understanding, at least not over here.

This is something that really confuses me, particularly when combined with the line on schools not being a place where the virus is spread (as parroted by my step-father, so clearly straight from the Daily Mail)

[willie1foot]

Surely the solution is just to have voice activated pin pads.

So, you call out your PIN in the shop? I suspect there's some people who'd have security concerns about that...

[anton pulisov]

I didn't say there wouldn't be issues to be ironed out

[willie1foot]

We went to the Indian restaurant (only one of, in Crawley in the 1970s FFS). Exotic or what?

There were no Indian restaurants in my home town when I left in 1977 and when we did go to a restaurant it was for a rare (as in infrequent) steak dinner. We had a Chinese takeaway with a limited menu comprised of Chow Mein, Chop Suey, Curry, Prawn Crackers and Chips as far as I can recall.

Until I arrived in Australia, I thought sultanas were a compulsory ingredient in a curry... damn you Vesta!

[ursus arctos]

Indian restaurants were exotic in NYC into the late 70s, with the handful that existed tending to over-priced Orientalist nonsense.

A wave of Bengali immigrants changed that rather quickly.

[Uncle Ethan]

The double limit on contactless transactions has been in place in Australia for about a year now. I have thus far not been mugged.

[ursus arctos]

I have no data, but my sense is that most contactless transaction in our neighbourhood are done by smartphone, not card

[caja-dglh]

The most likely path forward is some form of authentication. You use your RFID payment, they send a code to your Bill Gates chip from your COVID vaccine. Seamless, 100% secure.

[Sporting]

On the subject of being mugged, er, how many of us leave the house without our expensive phones, potentially a greater loss than easily blocked bank cards?