People who don’t carry their bank cards with them

[Auburngal]

I was in Sainsbury’s this morning and systems are down. No contactless, chip n pin taking ages to go through. Unable to buy gift cards, mobile top up vouchers.

Systems going down like this happen not very often but when they do it’s awful.

On the self scan next to me a woman screamed at the manager on why she can’t pay on her mobile.

Why do many people don’t carry their bank cards anymore? The cards don’t weigh much. Plus if the contactless payment system goes down, hopefully their card will go through via chip n pin. Also they won’t look like idiots either. No sympathy for these.

Regarding contactless payments- sometimes your bank, NOT the retailer etc asks you to do a CnP payment as part of security. “I dunno my PIN”. You can change your PIN to any number you want (not 1234, 1111) at any ATM under PIN services.

Paying on your phone is no different to using a contactless card, the technology of a nfc chip is exactly the same. However when you use your phone it’s locked behind your password or biometric data.

1.My local Tesco has signal problems. Many places in arcades do.
I get REALLY fed up with local folks who know this. Long queues at one of only 2 manned tills, behind someone wandering back and forth waving their phone at the window to get their club card up, and then doing the same for their mobile banking. If it does not work, then they have to put the contents to one side and cancel the entire shop, so the shopper can go across the road and get money.

2.How selfish is it to go into a small shop for a loaf, a packet of sweets, a magazine and create all that work for the staff - it is more expensive for the small trader, it takes longer to do - not at all time saving or more efficient.

Same here. Mostly because I CBA setting it up. Plus I've certainly watched a fair few people scrolling through their phone wallet, appearing to choose between a selection of cards to pay.

Likewise in airports, having to hand their phone over so the boarding gate person can position the barcode just so for the scanner only for the screen to lock at the last minute so the whole process has to be started again and takes an age longer than just scanning a printed boarding pass.

But what would people do if their phone broke, ran out of battery or was lost/stolen. Or if the system was down or was hacked. Or external problems like a natural disaster or terrorism got in the way?

If your life is on your phone, you wouldn't know where you are, couldn't phone anyone and couldn't pay for anything. It would be an interesting exercise to see how people dealt with this.

2.How selfish is it to go into a small shop for a loaf, a packet of sweets, a magazine and create all that work for the staff - it is more expensive for the small trader, it takes longer to do - not at all time saving or more efficient

is it?

I don’t see how it’s more time consuming to flash a phone/watch at a machine than it is to pay cash which always seems longer as the sales assistant has to count change out.

I don’t know about the expense but I asked my local farm shop if they’d rather I pay cash for an item under £10 and the owner said no, he’d rather I paid by card. He doesn’t like cash as he has to go to the bank. Other businesses near me have signs up saying they are a cashless business and don’t accept cash. So I assume any card charges can’t be too bad.

You don’t need a signal to use device payment. The card details are on the phone. I’ve used it on a plane before now.

A couple of pubs near me are card only as it keeps the insurance down.

I very rarely get cash out these days, but I carry my purse with my cards”just in case”, even though I use Apple Pay for absolutely everything! I don’t understand people who say they can’t keep control of their spending , by swiping ; I keep an eye on my account, so I roughly know what’s going out, in my head.

I don’t get these people who get angry with shop employees either! What is the point. Yeah it’s annoying, but what can they do?

Same here. Mostly because I CBA setting it up. Plus I've certainly watched a fair few people scrolling through their phone wallet, appearing to choose between a selection of cards to pay.

Setting up the cards is a pain, one of my credit cards, M&S credit card, the one I use most, wanted me to ring my bank, I didn't bother, the other cards on there I don't use that much and probably wasn't worth going through the the bother of setting them up and you have to do this all again when you change you phone/watch.

If you have a lot of cards like I do, you have to scroll through, it's easier to see them in a physical purse. Phone payments are easier if you only have one card, though only having one card doesn't seem very wise.

Hence why there are customers- regular in my store buy bags every single time they visit. It’s 8.5 years since the bag charge was introduced in England. That is long enough for people to take a bag with them.

Last year, a friend who used to do buy bags every time she shopped. She used her own bags . Plus put aside the money she would have spent on bags. She saved £125! She lives by herself and two cats. So a family could be saving £175-200 a year. Thing is people don’t see that as a whole.

Plus anyone who uses brand new carrier bags as rubbish bags clearly got more money than sense! Bin bags are cheaper- per unit, bigger and able to tie them up properly.

What sort of family uses 3000 shopping bags a year??

On a similar note- those customers who stand at the tills on their phone transferring money on banking app from one account to another. Or ring their OH ‘transfer £20 love’

Check your balance before you pay. If in a shop buying multiple items - use the calculator on your phone! Then do any transfers. Then pay!

They are 30p at my work and that’s the norm
price for bags for most retailers. £175 on 30p bags is about 580 bags or 11 a week. That’s including all shops - supermarkets, discount shops (Poundland B&M), clothing, shops selling toiletries- Boots, Superdrug. Toy shops etc

I don’t rely on my phone for contactless payments, or much else that the world expects if it these days, things like train tickets for example. When my battery inevitably runs out I’m fucked. In a changing world where our phones are so essential I would’ve expected manufacturers to have kept up with that and improved the batteries.

Our local corner shop asks people to pay for small purchases (under £5) with cash as if we pay by card he makes no profit on the transaction at all. Since most of our transactions are newspapers we always pay by cash, as do most other people.

Shatteredmama, don't you check your car has petrol before going out in it? There's lots of catastrophising on this thread

That sounds a pain I just move tickets to my Google wallet since I discovered you don't need the Internet to use it.

They are vastly, vastly improved on what they used to be. I remember when I first got my iPhone 11 Pro Max, I hammered it all day, through an airport, on the plane, then navigated with gps for 2.5 hours in the hire car and I think I’d used about 50% of the battery if that. We’ll be on to iPhone 16 this year, and given tech increments are pretty exponential, things get smaller, faster and more powerful every single time.

Plus, if you really think your phone might die in the time period you’re away from a charge, power banks are small and inexpensive to take along with you.

I know, like travelling with a spare can of petrol in your car

I always have my card because I always have my phone when I’m out and about .
its a wallet type phone case so has places to put cards

Yes, car always has petrol thanks 😊 The point I was trying to make was that if I was out of the house all day and away from a plug socket, my phone battery wouldn’t last, so it couldn’t be relied upon

I’d rather carry a small lightweight bank card than a power bank

Some Sainsbury’s customers hurled abuse at the staff on Saturday. The staff had no control over the system going down.

Most who did this are making themselves fools for not knowing their PIN.

Anyone who shouts abuse like this should be ashamed of themselves. If they don’t- nasty people

It costs businesses to bank cash as well and card charges are tiny (the high end is 6% so that would be 30p on a £5 transaction) so I find it hard to believe they’d make no money on £5 purchase. Especially because the more cash they have the more insurance is.

More likely they aren’t reporting their full profits for the day which is easy to do if cash. So I’m glad this sort of thing is getting stamped out. A more charitable explanation could be they are borrowing from shop float informally for daily expenditure and don’t want it to show in accounts which is totally legal but worrying for their finances.

“But in the scenario here, people with a bank card could go and get cash if chip and pin wasn’t working either. Those with only a phone can’t do that.”

Not strictly true. You can access cash from an ATM with your phone - lots of banks offer this via app or text.

I always use my watch / phone. You don’t even need your phone with you to pay via your watch.

In many shops like M&S, Sainsburys and now Tesco, you can scan and pay on the app via card details directly or with “wallet” using Apple Pay etc. You don’t even have to go to the checkouts at M&S you just walk out. Using your Apple Pay wallet is much more secure than using a physical card with chip and pin.

I always feel like a shoplifter in M&S when I use that service, @firstfamhol! 🤣