to not want a contactless card?

[muminhants]

I didn't realise until about a year ago that my debit card is contactless, when I was in a cafe close to work and the waitress used the contactless thing on her machine. I was a bit shocked as I hadn't realised it was contactless. I'm not keen but the limit was only £10 then.

Anyway now it's £20 per transaction. My debit card expires soon so I asked my bank if I could have a non-contactless one when it comes up for renewal. They said I can but if I do, I can't use it at a fuel pump or on a train or anywhere where the machine isn't "plugged" in. So it would be limited.

I have a joint account with another bank with my husband and that card is not contactless and I can use it at a fuel pump etc.

Why should I have to have the hassle of proving that I didn't spend money on the card if it gets nicked or I lose it. Imagine I'm in my local town centre and I buy a few things in say Boots and Sainsburys using chip and PIN. I lose my card, someone finds it and goes on a contactless spending spree. How on earth do I prove that it wasn't me? I know there's a daily limit but I don't want to lose any money. At least if there's a PIN number requirement there is some sort of security.

What do the banks get out of this?

Are the people who refused to have Chip and PIN still working only in cash?

Well my mother is. Until very recently she was still getting money out by cashing a cheque in the bank, she cut up her debit card when it arrived. I think she now has to use it to withdraw money but she does it at the counter, never the ATM she refuses to use them at all, but then she is the worlds most paranoid woman. She is absolutely convinced that everyone is out to get her money/house/belongings, it borders on obsession with her.

I have been carrying cards around everyday for 30 years and not had one loss by any sort of fraudulent use, and I do check my statements and would notice. I think these improve security as there's no chance if walking off and leaving it in the machine, no chance if anyone seeing your number as you type it in. I wish the single transaction limit was higher.

Namechange. I know loads of older people who never use chip and pen and use cheques and cash. Also this may be shocking but you be surprised how many people dont have computers. Saw someone today who said he never been on the internet. By that i mean no internet as using the phone for internet is unheard of. (I dont use my mobile for more than text or phoning people).

Will I need to get some of those protective wallets?

The risk is essentially non-existent, but as the shields are about 50p each, it's hardly expensive to calm yourself if you're worried.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, someone could read your card at a useful distance, say two metres. There are some very fundamental physical reasons why this is very, very hard, but just suppose. What could they do with that? They presumably want to make some money out of the scheme, so they're going to need to perform a transaction using a terminal that has a merchant agreement (after all, gold coins don't just pop out the back of their magic card reader). After two or three people complain, the bank knows who the villain is, yes?

The paper I linked to earlier shows a very, very difficult "relay attack". In this model, I walk around London with a heavily modified card connected via a cable up my wrist to a laptop in my bag. I walk into a shop, and when I'm asked to pay, my confederate stands next to a victim and relays the transaction so the shop is taking the money from the (not present) victim. There are 500ms timeouts involved so this is quite difficult to execute, but it's possible (a proof of concept was done from the stage at a conference in the US making a transaction onto a card located in England). So the confederate could go to various shops, buy things for twenty (or thirty) quid and charge it to people whose cards are being read in their pockets (using a shopping trolley or some similarly inconspicuous aerial). That wouldn't leave a single terminal as the destination for the fraud.

But it does seem all rather hard work in order to steal thirty quid. There are equivalently complex attacks in the literature on Chip and PIN, which have the advantage that the limit on the amount of money is higher, and they've not been seen in the wild because the investment in equipment, difficulty in monetising it and risk of getting caught simply aren't worth it. Why do complex things with complex equipment to steal things worth twenty quid, risky a prosecution for fraud, when you can just shoplift them and only risk a caution?

Thanks namechange, I will probably get two contactless debit cards later this year then.

I personally never had anything against chip and pin, nor any problems using it. The only person I ever knew who had a problem with it was my MIL, but it wasn't due to any inability to recall her PIN. She was fine with that, but towards the end of her life she had bad arthritis in her fingers and had problems using keypads and ATMs for that reason. Contactless might help people like her, I suppose. I don't think it led to more fraud.

With regard to cheques, yes, the two facts must be related. Shops and other businesses all use chip and pin now as far as I know, and with regard to paying workmen or other bills I do it all via online banking now (or occasionally in cash if necessary), as do most people I know. It is far safer and more convenient IMHO that sending cheques in the post.

Come to think of it, the only times I ever see cheques these days are a handful of times a year when my parents send them to us for the kids' birthdays, to get them Easter eggs, and for Christmas. They are old gimmers who wouldn't touch a computer with a barge pole and whose only mobile phone is one of the most antiquated models. They must use chip and pin in the supermarket and petrol stations though, because it simply can't be avoided.

I know loads of older people who never use chip and pen and use cheques and cash.

Or, more accurately, cash, because it's now almost impossible to use cheques in shops. No-one is suggesting the withdrawal of cash (although, of course, shops are perfectly entitled to refuse it, just as supermarkets stopped accepting cheques before the guarantee card scheme ended).

Tops cash for petrol or supermarkets. Very easy to avoid chip and pin....

Tops cash for petrol or supermarkets. Very easy to avoid chip and pin....

Could you explain why carrying around large amounts of cash is more secure than using chip and pin?

Namechange i pay my supplier by cheque and accept cheques myself. I pay my clinic rent by cheque too. You right re cheque guarantee but in some of the local villages ive been where everyone knows everyone else they do accept cheques from known locals! The big supermarkets dont!

Names...just telling you what i know my patients are doing and tbh what ive started doing. I do feel alot safer carrying around £40-50 than my card with the risk of it being taken than having to cancel it and then get another. I seriously havent used my chip and pen card for over 2 weeks now.... I see alot of people are paying for food by cash in the shops now. Maybe its just the queues i get behind.

Namechange i pay my supplier by cheque and accept cheques myself.

Why do you think this is better than an online transfer? You're choosing something which is slower, less secure and more error-prone because...?

I do feel alot safer carrying around £40-50 than my card with the risk of it being taken than having to cancel it and then get another.

Well, that's your choice. If you lose your card, you lose no money. If you lose fifty quid, you lose fifty quid.

It isnt more secure, but people do it.

Dont have online transfer! Tbh im not really sure what online transfer is. I have been known to go into the bank and get them to move money. Is that what you mean? Cheques are alot more secure and i have a copy of it.

Anyway like op i dont like contactless and i know loads of people who dont either so it would be good for the bank to do a switch on or off scheme for those that want it or dont!

Cheques are alot more secure

As for cheques, banks did make an abortive attempt to withdraw them two or three years ago if I remember rightly. There was an outcry and they backed off, though had possibly been just testing the water.

There are still a dwindling though fair number of people like my parents around, who are not computerised and have no intention of becoming so. I don't know how they manage to do that, but they just stick to what they know. Cash, cheques, credit cards and (somewhat begrudgingly) chip and pin debit cards are what they know.

For that reason, I think it was just rather too soon to withdraw cheques at that point. Maybe in 10 - 15 years time though the banks will try again and be more successful. I no longer have any strong personal opinions on cheques one way or the other. I do have a cheque book, but it is pretty old now and rarely comes out.

Tbh im not really sure what online transfer is.

You log on to your online banking, and just transfer the money to the person you're paying. It's on your statement, it's on their statement, it takes a couple of minutes.

Love the fact that I can get cash back by using my credit card as an oyster card.

The only issue I have had is once in a cafe the server asked me to give them my card so they could "tap" it on the machine for me - without me actually seeing the amount being charged on the machine. She wasn't impressed when I insisted I use the pin!

I go into the bank to do anything. I take it online means on your own computer so very easy for a dyslexic like me to write the wrong number or letter and send to the wrong person. I know people have lost money that way. When i need to go to the bank to transfer money (about 4 times in last 5 years) i grap a cashier and she double checks its right before we send. I woukd never ever ever do that at home.

Cheques are alot more secure as it can only be paid out to the person or company its written to. Very easy and very safe.

Chip and pin is an excellent example, now you bring it up.

We know that people, old and young, do not in fact cope with remembering all their many PINs. What they do is write the PIN down: 32% of us do so.

If those cards are then used fraudulently, the bank is not liable. And even where the victim insists they haven't written down the PIN, the bank claims they have. (Particularly noticeable in the very long-running issue of supposed phantom cash machine withdrawals.)

Chip and pin is therefore a success for the bank: it hasn't paid out.

It's rather less a success for the customer, who has been robbed.

Risk has been transferred from bank to customer.

I can see something similar happening with contactless cards: customers will swear blind they haven't made a transaction. Banks will accuse customers of lying, or forgetting, or making a mistake using the reader. And won't pay out.

So a risk that no one needed in the first place has been created and transferred onto the customer. That's my objection to contactless in a nutshell.

Cheques are very insecure. In the days before online banking took off I had more than one go astray in the post. If a fraudster gets hold of it then all they have to do is set up an account in the name of the payee apparently and then the cheque can be paid into it.

They are also supposed to be pretty easy to adapt and forge.

We know that people, old and young, do not in fact cope with remembering all their many PINs

How useful, then, that every single UK bank offers the facility to change the PIN, so that you can set the PIN for your cards to be the same.

And what are these "all their many PINS"? Their debit card and...?

I take it online means on your own computer so very easy for a dyslexic like me to write the wrong number or letter and send to the wrong person

Set up the recipient. Transfer a pound. Check with the recipient that it's arrived. When it has, transfer the rest. The most you can lose is a pound (in fact, I think you can transfer a penny, in which case, you risk losing a penny). Next objection?

I have two debit cards and a credit card. All have the same PIN, as I would never remember different ones.

I have never written my pin down, or given it to anyone. I have had the same one for 30 years and it is etched into my brain. On the odd occasion I end up with a new card that has a new PIN I go straight to the cash dispenser the next time I am out. The new PIN gets its one and only use then, because I select PIN services and change it to my existing one.