What are your thoughts on the contactless card limit increasing to £100?

[martin2345uk]

On a related note it's great that TfL have now enabled "Express mode" with Apple Pay, so you can now tap your phone on the barriers without having to authenticate with your face/fingerprint first, I tried it for the first time yesterday.

 

[johncrossley]

If banks were giving out lots of refunds due to contactless fraud, they wouldn't be promoting increased contactless use.

 

[londonteacher]

Think it has been widely reported over the years

So prove it? Show the evidence!

In truth like with all methods of payment their are dangers. Cash - you could lose it or receive a forgery. Chip and Pin - card skimmers could be present capturing your details and pin so they can access your account. Contactless - someone could use your card if you lose it. Card and signature - someone could learn your signature.

 

[LAX54]

So prove it? Show the evidence!

In truth like with all methods of payment their are dangers. Cash - you could lose it or receive a forgery. Chip and Pin - card skimmers could be present capturing your details and pin so they can access your account. Contactless - someone could use your card if you lose it. Card and signature - someone could learn your signature.

Bit like the RFID on car key... who would bother ?

 

[londonteacher]

Bit like the RFID on car key... who would bother ?

So you have no evidence?

Of course people will do so. But it will be such a small amount of people. If it was a problem then banks would be doing something to stop it. They are not, because its not a big issue!

The limit is changing to £100 and a lot of people will be happy with this. Some people just don't like change!

 

[jfollows]

I'm totally unbothered by this, in fact I welcome it.

I have my cards set up with my iPhone and my iWatch, and one of the reasons I bought the latter was to enable this.

In the first place for travelling in London, contactless without the need to get out either a card or a phone.

I don't think I even need to press a button on my watch any more.

Personally I only use contactless with credit cards, not debit cards, because I manage my current account balance minutely and having extra debits would complicate things. But that's just me.

I withdrew £200 in cash about a year ago and haven't spent it. Pre-Covid this would have lasted a couple of months I guess. I'm happy with the move to contactless and with the limit increase - as others have said this means it can be used for buying petrol, for example, or even for my weekly shop in Sainsbury's.

 

[najaB]

Bit like the RFID on car key... who would bother ?

If you mean stealing vehicles by cloning/cracking remote entry systems then that's something completely different. For one thing remote entry systems, by definition, work remotely over tens of metres (e.g. from a van parked on the other side of the street) whereas Near Field Communication.. well, pretty obvious no? Not to mention that something as simple as having two contactless cards in your wallet would stop either of them being read.

Secondly the window of opportunity for our putative card scammers will be seconds, as compared to a car parked outside a home overnight.

Thirdly, and probably most importantly, once a thief opens the car and drives away they have the car - mission accomplished. Even if I do manage to establish communication with a card in someone's pocket/bag, I need to debit that money to an account somewhere. There is, by design, both a built-in delay before the funds are fully cleared and available as well as a clear paper trail showing where the money went and linking back to the person(s) who opened the account in the first place. It's not impossible to get around these protections but given that the fraud would be detected pretty quickly it's highly unlikely that the cost/benefit ratio would make it worthwhile.

 

[birchesgreen]

You don't need to spend it, the person standing behind you can spend it for you you won't know until you get a statement or your card is refused.


Think it has been widely reported over the years, but no one is bothered as such, as the banks (so far) always refund the money, it is why the RFD wallets were invented.

well i check my account every day, sometimes twice

 

[najaB]

well i check my account every day, sometimes twice

One of my cards gives me an in-app alert every time its used.

 

[birchesgreen]

One of my cards gives me an in-app alert every time its used.

Yeah my Monzo does that, i think i could set it up for my main account too but like many things have never gotten round to it!

 

[LAX54]

One of my cards gives me an in-app alert every time its used.

Mine does too, pings as soon as there is a debit from it.

 

[district]

My credit card company said it was impossible to disable contactless, now after years of refusing them I have to work out where to drill the one recent card I have.

Could you consider this is possibly a bit of an over-reaction?

Personally i am not a fan of contactless at all let alone increasing the limit. It is so easy to get scammed using contactless. If you are in a crowd anyone can easily hold their device against your bag or your wallet in your back pocket and just easily steal money from your card in like one second. Personally i would prefer if we got rid of contactless entirely and just went back to using chip and pin only.

Your assertion that it is “easy to get scammed” is disproportionate to the amount of similar crime that actually happens. My partner did not see one case of this whilst working for the Fraud department of a bunk bank for the entire time he was there, and your claim isn’t backed by any statistics.

Furthermore, in order for someone to do this they would need to register as a merchant and order a card reader. Granted this is fairly easy with an organisation like Sumup, but they will soon close your account when the transactions you make are charged back when the users report fraud.

Besides, your bank is totally liable for all loss you incur provided you have not been unduly negligent (like deliberately leaving your card unattended). The only person at risk from contactless fraud are banks, and it’s them that’s encouraging the change!

 

[galwhv69]

Not a problem for me as I don't really make many transactions like that. Only gripe with contactless is that it clashes with my Clubcard

 

[gswindale]

I think the only time in the last 25 years I've had a potential payment issue was on a bus in Swansea where the driver refused my £1 coin after giving it a bite! She reckoned she could tell fakes that way!

Chip & Pin and Contactless both feel more secure to me than either cash or signing a bit of paper.

 

[al78]

I can't tell whether the snobbery over purchasing items from Card Factoryon this thread is real or a joke? I would assume a joke!

Or Dorian Green from Birds of a Feather has registered on this forum.

What was the point of introducing contactless in the first place anyway? Typing in your pin takes like three seconds? Are people in that much of a rush these days that saving three seconds is important to them? Are there any other benefits of contactless other than saving a couple seconds?

With the number of trundlebunnies inhabiting the SE these days, anything which increases the time efficiency of checkout queues is a good thing. Typing in a pin takes some people a lot longer than three seconds.

I find it strange that someone might object to a system on the grounds that it might only save a bit of time. It is like self service checkouts which are far more time efficient than manned checkouts (one queue for six machines instead of one queue per checkout window) which people object too. Is there a slow living cult in this country that believe in living life as slowly as possible and will oppose anything which ends up saving time?

 

[gordonthemoron]

I work for a Banking Fraud Software supplier/developer. Our software is used by most UK banks for authorisations. One trick banks have introduced is to total the value of contactless transactions since the previous PIN entry, once this total exceeds a pre determined amount, the bank will force entry of the PIN. So, the limit of a single transaction may be increasing to £100, but it does not automatically follow that the amount of outstanding contactless payments will change

 

[al78]

It doesn't really bother me other than I will be able to use contactless for my weekly shop instead of having to input my pin, but that is a very minor thing. As for people taking money off your card with a device whilst it is in your pocket, I suspect this will be very difficult to do in practice. My experience of contactless is that you have to hold the card very close to the reader in order for it to register, so if a thief had a similar device, they would have to hold it up against my side pocket, which I think I would notice, even then would the signal penetrate my wallet and my clothing?

 

[johncrossley]

I work for a Banking Fraud Software supplier/developer. Our software is used by most UK banks for authorisations. One trick banks have introduced is to total the value of contactless transactions since the previous PIN entry, once this total exceeds a pre determined amount, the bank will force entry of the PIN. So, the limit of a single transaction may be increasing to £100, but it does not automatically follow that the amount of outstanding contactless payments will change

www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-confirms-increase-thresholds-contactless-payments

says

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has confirmed changes to its rules to allow for an increase in the single transaction contactless payment threshold from £45 to £100. The contactless threshold for multiple transactions will also increase from £130 to £300.

 

[al78]

I work for a Banking Fraud Software supplier/developer. Our software is used by most UK banks for authorisations. One trick banks have introduced is to total the value of contactless transactions since the previous PIN entry, once this total exceeds a pre determined amount, the bank will force entry of the PIN. So, the limit of a single transaction may be increasing to £100, but it does not automatically follow that the amount of outstanding contactless payments will change

Interesting. I have wondered in the past if I lost my card and someone found it, what would stop them going on a contactless spending spree. In the past, my bank contacted me if they detected unusual spending habits which I would have to verify over the phone (unusual in my case resulting from me going on holiday), do banks still do this?

 

[najaB]

In the past, my bank contacted me if they detected unusual spending habits which I would have to verify over the phone (unusual in my case resulting from me going on holiday), do banks still do this?

These days it tends to be a text or in-app alert rather than a call.

 

[nlogax]

These days it tends to be a text or in-app alert rather than a call.

In recent months on multiple occasions my bank has deployed their three step approach. Put a hold on my debit card and associated Google Pay functions, then their security team calls me, and finally if I miss the call they send a text (minutes or hours later) advising me to call them to sort it out.

I suppose that's one good reason to keep an emergency tenner in the wallet!

 

[plugwash]

What was the point of introducing contactless in the first place anyway?

To make the banking industry money.

Firstly when you take out cash from your bank account it costs the banking industry money. When you use your card in a shop it makes the banking industry money.

Secondly when you spend money you don't have on a credit card or overdraft and have to pay it back over a long period the banks make a bunch of money on interest.

So it's in the banking industry's interests to make card transactions at retail low friction.

 

[najaB]

To make the banking industry money.

I don't dispute that the intention is to increase profits, but I disagree with your analysis.

Firstly when you take out cash from your bank account it costs the banking industry money. When you use your card in a shop it makes the banking industry money.

Cash handling fees are paid by the merchant so the bank makes largely the same amount when cash is involved as compared to when transactions are done electronically.

Secondly when you spend money you don't have on a credit card or overdraft and have to pay it back over a long period the banks make a bunch of money on interest.

That would apply if you were withdrawing cash or paying with chip and PIN. Absolutely nothing to do with Contactless.*

So it's in the banking industry's interests to make card transactions at retail low friction.

It's actually in the merchant's interest as much as it is in the banking industries. *Contactless makes it easier for people to spend, which may mean an increase in impulse purchases.

 

[Dai Corner]

I don't dispute that the intention is to increase profits, but I disagree with your analysis.

Do banks actually make any profit on day-to-day transactions? I thought it was customers paying interest on loans, overdrafts and credit cards which made the profits (and enabled the rest of us to get 'free' banking?

It's actually in the merchant's interest as much as it is in the banking industries. *Contactless makes it easier for people to spend, which may mean an increase in impulse purchases.

Good for merchants but not so good for less well off customers who find it difficult to budget. I'd like to see a way of limiting the amount you could spend in a day/week; analogous to withdrawing cash and when it's spent that's it.

 

[DarloRich]

what do I think? I think I need to order a new card as I have broken my contactless

 

[najaB]

Do banks actually make any profit on day-to-day transactions? I thought it was customers paying interest on loans, overdrafts and credit cards which made the profits (and enabled the rest of us to get 'free' banking?

The increased profits are due to people spending more (and more than they have specifically).

Good for merchants but not so good for less well off customers who find it difficult to budget. I'd like to see a way of limiting the amount you could spend in a day/week; analogous to withdrawing cash and when it's spent that's it.

My card allows me to set a limit, but unfortunately it doesn't go any lower than £500 per day or £4,000 per month!

 

[Andrew S]

One way might be to have two bank accounts, one "main" account to receive income, and to pay regular fixed bills. Then a second "spending" account is for daily shopping etc, just transfer a daily or weekly sum into there. Once it's gone you can't spend more. Don't take the card for the main account out with you so there's no temptation to dip into it. If you have a banking app for the spending account you can see in real time how much is left. Don't have the app for the main account then you can't "borrow" from it when you're out and about.

I've done this for years, it works most of the time for me. Haven't used cash in years.