I should not watch watchdog!
They had a worrying article of banks freezing accounts for suspected fraud, for days, weeks, months.
If my bank did that I'd be in the branch asking for my money and if not given it, calling the police and demanding they be arrested for theft! No idea if that would work, but ultimately if someone has my money and will not give it to me that has to be a criminal offence one way or another.
Then they have a case of of Oyster cards in same wallet as contactless debit cards- saying you cannot have non-contactless debit cards. Do that to me and they would get a dispute, via the financial ombudsman, every single charge they make. Simple as that.
Grrr...
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I was also annoyed by this weeks watchdog mostly because whilst it is obviously possible to "present" the wrong card, in my experience (and I use contactless many times every day - or try as even now I do hit the limits for number of concurrent contactless transactions) it's pretty hard to do because every reader I've ever used kicks off if it sees multiple cards and you get a "present one card only" warning. I'm also amazed anyone reckons those readers are able to read cards that are any distance at all away, as in my experience "contactless" is inaccurate as the tolerance on distance seems to be sub 2-3mm. If the wrong card is being "charged" it's because the user presented the wrong card - if they're both close enough to be read, it won't accept either, and if it only accepts one than THAT was the card presented. Since I do have several contactless cards, and I only use one regularly, that card is on one side of my wallet (at the back) and the others are all on the other side. I have NEVER had the wrong card charged many hundreds of transactions later.
ReplyDeleteThe bank thing though is imo a bit different - this is one of those ridiculous nobody wins, everyone loses situations dreamed up because the rules are wrong.
Surely if the banks think there is fraud, that's a criminal matter and thus one for the police, thus why aren't the banks simply notifying them to deal with it - I don't understand why the banks are now making the decisions.
How does that work if you have only one contactless card, which is not the card you want to use, and a typical shop setup, where the only place to put your wallet is right next to the card reader?
DeleteI would expect, having seen contactless readers trigger my phone's NFC at that distance, that the card reader would read the only contactless card in my wallet. If that wasn't the card I wanted to use, the wrong card has been charged.
Note that this isn't entirely hypothetical - the only contactless card I've ever been offered was a debit card, and I spend entirely on my cashback credit cards, reserving the debit card for getting cash out and spending with the government.
I've been having a bit of an email conversation with Metro Bank about their contactless debit card and they won't even tell me the location of the connection to the aerial so that I could cut it.
ReplyDeleteI expect it is a loop, which would be easy to cut without making the card look dodgy. Maybe you need an x-ray or very bright light? Someone, somewhere must have an x-ray of a contactless card. Failing that I suppose you could "Lose" one of your cards, and find that it meets a sticky end with a scalpel.
DeleteI got a photo of what looks to be the relevant innards
Deletehttp://blog.clifford.ac/2013/06/contracless-card-from-metro-bank.html