To be sick of bloody payment authorisations when paying online?

[PepsiMaxiMam]

First off they're a great thing, when used appropriately.

Dropping 3k on a holiday, payment authorisation required, fair enough.

Buying from a website you've never used before, absolutely.

But I have to authorise my payment on my app every damn time I top up my gas or electric, I do this 3 to 4 times a week and always the same amount.

Tesco every week for the same day.

Topping up my child's lunch money account.

£5 on the lottery.

Surely there should be some kind of tracking that shows I regularly use these sites and they are 'safe' unless I suddenly try to do a £600 tesco?!

I have to authorise the payment when I’m paying my own credit card bill. It’s Barclaycard. I bank with Barclays.

Yes this happens constantly for my electric bill. As if someone is going to steal bank details then use that to pay the electric bill of the person they stole from - funnily enough it does not happen for one off purchases

I don't mind the extra security if it actually works. Set aside some time to pay some bills the other day, authentication codes came through 3 hours later meaning I couldn't pay them/had to start again.
Now pop ups all over the bloody place and having to click numerous x's just to view a page sends me apoplectic. I instantly click away and refuse to use those retailers. No I don't want to open an account/sign up to a billion emails a day, just wanted to view an item.

Did they pay your gas and electric while they were at it? Actually no as that would have needed authorisation

It's a bank thing.

There was a change in EU legislation, effective 2019 (so I suppose it still had some influence in the UK), which described two factor standards.

Standard authorization is logging into the app, preferably using biometry.
SMS code validation was discouraged by the same legislation.
One of the allowed methods is behavioural analysis, recognising frequent payment patterns and evaluating misuse risk to confirm some payments automatically.

One of my banks (elsewhere in EU) uses the behavioural analysis, the other doesn't (and requires authorization every time).

I don't mind verification from my bank as it is random and I never know when I'm going to be asked for it.

Hello 👋🏻

Financial crime senior manager here.

There is a really good reason why you are being asked to confirm payments and it's not always quite as simple as the value.

Lots of fraud monitoring systems are callibrated in different ways to prevent fraud - this may include checking device / IP addresses for example.

Key areas for fraud are:

Amazon
TfL
Online mainstream shops (sainsburys)
Deliveroo

Etc

So you'll find fraudsters try small payments with these retailers before going crazy with your card,

If the bank can prevent these smaller items being validated and approved it prevents bigger ones from happening.

Sorry it's a pain, but far less of a pain to need a new card or lose £££'s from your bank :)

Yes, two factor authentication came about under PSD2 and it is a requirement

I had 5 from Amazon yesterday; all for items I have on Subscribe and Save!

I'm in the UK, but my bank doesn't require any authorisation every single time I pay online either. So I wonder which banks some posters are with as some are stricter than others.

I, when I'm sat in my study on the ground floor when I remember a bill I need to pay. And the bloody thing needs verification, and the phone is two floors up by my bed, so I leave the computer, struggle up the stairs, get the phone, struggle downstairs, and get the code. But it's on a small Nokia and I can't read it, even with a magnifying glass.
I have to change the number, but have to go through the procedure to do that. And since Waitrose have pushed my email over to gmail, there is another layer of change to go through for that. Not to mention the computers which won't do email.

Bah! Humbug!

Few seconds!!!

I am getting used to it now we have slightly better mobile signal at home (some peope have to run to end of roads etc in the UK just to get these codes to a mobile) and now I have worked out the passwords etc and updated my banks' online app where I have to approve the codes, but it is certainly quite a hassle.

There’s usually somewhere you can have an approved list of places, sites, that you don’t feel you need authorisation for and places you don’t want your card to be usable for.

I have mine unusable for gas stations because I don’t drive and only go inside one maybe a handful of times a year, if that. My approved list is very small and if someone was able to get ahold of my card or information and try to use it, it would be difficult because the bank would flag it already knowing my spending habits and any authorisation would be an email or a text to me to put numbers in and they would have to have access to those to do so.

I agree, necessarily but bloody annoying at times.

I have this problem and don't live rurally - I'm within walking distance of a UK capital city centre! 😒

I’m with you on this because on the main account that we use, it’s a joint account and for some reason it’s always DH’s phone that they text the code to which is a pain in the backside if he’s not here and I want to buy something plus even though he doesn’t care what I buy and would always always encourage me to get things, it kind of gives the feeling of having to ask for permission! It’s particularly irritating when it’s something like £1.50!

I have never had Amazon request authorisation of anything ever (probably tempting fate here).

I often have things sent to a variety of different addresses which I would have thought should trigger an authorisation request but it never has.

Paypal though - all the time, even if it's to a retailer I use regularly.

I can never get the app to work. Every single time it pings me to authorise yet my code doesn't work. Usually I can just reset the code but that's stopped now too. Basically can't use my CC online for anything right now.

Fraud is more common where small amounts are taken over a period of time rather than big amounts once or twice. Obviously the latter is more devastating at first but the former could yield higher returns for the fraudster over the long term.

I'm all for these checks.

For the poster who asked if they keep getting asked for a code for Sainsburys because they use a VPN, please tell me you're joking 🤣

They're two separate entities. You can walk into Barclays and ask to pay your Barclay card but you can't walk into Barclays and speak to someone about your Barclaycard.

Thank god it's not just me! I hate the authorisation process. Firstly, 9/10 it never works for my banking app so I give up after several tries and just use PayPal which I don't want to do. Secondly, it seems completely random when it needs authorisation. £50 at a new website? No authorisation. £5 at a website I use all the time. authorisation needed. So frustrating. It's actually stopped me buying online so much which is a good thing!

I find login authorisations much more annoying. At least with payment authorisations, some money is at stake and you're doing something. In particular, it annoys me that so many authorisations now are phone/SMS only and don't give you an option of email. If I'm logging into something, it's on my laptop, so I often don't have the phone on me or anywhere near.

This happens for my work email - there isn't really the option of another device except your personal phone, which we aren't supposed to have on us at work! Typical local council 😆