Contactless limit being up

[mumda]

I don't like the contactless limit increasing. I'm not sure I like tap and pay as it feels like it encourages spending without thinking.

Apologies for subject as can't edit to say going instead of being

The govt has described it as giving customers flexibility. Surely the flexibility would be to allow the limit to be set by the card holder?

Do any banks do that or am I just on my own in thinking it's a bad thing?

Call your bank and have contact less turned off. You aren't forced to use it.

I can alter my personal contactless limit or turn it off altogether through my banking app. Maybe you can do the same if you are worried.

Where are you seeing that it's being raised? I can't find anything about it.

Do you really need that few seconds pause while entering your PIN to spend mindfully though? How many times have you gone to enter your PIN and decided to stop the purchase?

If you use contactless via Apple Pay (and I assume maybe Google Pay?), there's no limit anyway.

I feel like people are increasingly expecting institutions and the government to prevent them from making poor choices rather than taking responsibility for themselves. If you know that you overspend by using contactless, then stop using it. Make a conscious decision to use cash or insert your card instead.

Put your card in every time if you’re not happy with tapping.

I think £100 is enough for contactless. Not so much from a 'do I really want to spend this?' pov, but more for security - which was always given as the justification for there being a limit.

It's hardly onerous inserting your card and pressing 5 buttons - it takes 5 seconds - but every time something marginally quicker comes in, we tend to view the former way as somehow unacceptably tedious and far too difficult to fathom.

Get an RF protector for your cards OP to protect you from RFID scammers now they've got more to gain. I'd also be worried if my cards got nicked and just anyone could spend a load of money on them before I could get them cancelled.

Cards used to be a secure way of paying for things but now I face more scrutiny/nannying if I want to do a £5 online transfer to my DSis than if I want to buy £100 of crap with my actual card, so the idea of that limit going up while I can't even send £1 to someone with online banking without receiving the Spanish Inquisition really gets my goat. WTF is wrong with this system?! I'd like a return to sanity on both sides of this.

With Apple Pay you can pay up to £10k but it makes sense for contactless to have a higher limit that £100 but not by too much, the lack of biometric / pin approval always makes me nervous!

Same here. I have done this sometimes. Also I have to input my pin every few transactions which is a security feature.

Can’t see the problem my banking app lets me alter it so just set it with a limit I’m happy with

You can spend a lot more than £10k using Apple Pay…and I have. AFAIK it has no limit, though the retailer might have their own floor limit for payments

I am surprised anyone still uses the physical card for contactless payments though; a phone is more convenient, more secure and has a higher limit. Even my 80+ year old payments have embraced using their phones for payment since Covid!

Yanbu. £100 seems ample from a security picture of view.
I didn't know we could set limits, I'll see if I can change mine.

There's a lot of evidence around this

People spend around 10% more when they use contactless vs when they use chip and pin. And a lot more when they use card rather than cash

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/stopped-using-contactless-saved-money-2996051?srsltid=AfmBOor1P6_nyEjAs-3Ufbz6JdWNHXeLlW3XwM8QtOFHEGwR0K_m1cw5

People are far less like to make an impulse purchase when they have to hand over cash, and far more likley when they can just tap their phone without really thinking about it.

Although the main extra spend is small impulse purchases so I suppose a higher limit is irrelevent to that

Not everyone wants to use their phone for payments? Not everyone has a smartphone?

It's very difficult for a number of people to use PINs for purchases. Including visually impaired people. Many people find using ATMs or withdrawing cash at a Post Office counter difficult for the same reason. With less bank branches available, a £100 contactless limit is very positive for people who might not otherwise be able to withdraw cash to cover a weekly shop or other significant purchases.

I rarely use my card to pay now, I use my phone, and that's pretty much unlimited. I dont know what percentage of device tapping vs card contact less is, but I'm sure it's rising.

Well said. When options are made available people seem to think they ‘have’ to use them.

If you’re irresponsible while tapping your card then stop tapping your card. It’s no one else’s fault. I can’t control myself around a multipack of crisps, so I simply stopped buying them.

I don't tend to use my phone as it's generally in the depths of my bag so find using card easier, I worry more about the card or phone being stolen so wouldn't get my phone out to pay in a lot of places anyway, maybe ok in a supermarket or large store but not in a lot of places

IMO you should be able to set the limit at a cash machine or app. You should also be able to block it completely if you wish.

More flexibility is required. So for example I would keep my limit at £50 and only allow up to 3 transactions per day.

Banks say they want to prevent fraud, but different people need different options/limits.

I have a smartphone, but I prefer to use a card for payments - one that doesn't have a battery that can run out or potentially freeze up without warning.

Just like I happily connect my laptop to the home WiFi, but I would never connect a washing machine to it, because it's an overly complex solution to a need that already has a simple solution - for me, at least.

I find it very difficult to pay with Apple Pay because I'm short & have quite small hand there's something about the way you need to hold the phone up to the payment thing double click the side button and show your face at the same time that is just Too difficult and that was before. Right now, I can't use my right hand. (dominant hand) and there is absolutely no way I could do this with my left hand, so I preferred to use my card.

Making it easy to set your own limit would be great. It’s well known that the easier it is to spend the more people spend - people are not robots or machines and all of us have basic human vulnerabilities that there is no software patch for

True - but how many of the people complaining about having to input a PIN are doing so because they have a disability that makes it legitimately difficult for them?

Also, everybody still has to enter a PIN now and again, whenever the terminal requires it - if it's an unusual transaction or you've already spent a certain amount using contactless.

I do very much sympathise with people with an actual need for more accessible methods - and sadly the ease of contactless could also leave blind or visually-impaired people more at risk from opportunist thieves, who wouldn’t know their PIN but could grab the card or move a payment reader next to it; but I stand by my previous comments for the vast majority of those complaining about this.