London Banter - View Single Post

[email protected] · February 25th 17, 06:52 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Neil Williams) wrote:

On 2017-02-25 18:59:08 +0000, d said:

Gotta love contactless. Chip and pin arrives - there being a damn good
reason for the PIN - then the banks decide they'll get more transactions
if they remove the PIN and pretend its not really needed after all. So
why do I need one if I put the card in the slot but not if I use
contactless? What exactly is the qualitative difference? Answer:
there isn't one.

There's a *quantitative* difference, namely the £30 cap, and the fact
that if you do more than N transactions in a row the PIN will be
called for.

Yes, thieves could nick a wallet and go around spending about 5 x £30
(£150) with it before they had issues. But that's not going to, er,
break the bank. And if it did happen, the end customer is not liable.

It's basically making cards more of an effective replacement for
cash, and I encourage that, as cash is a faff (and encourages the
black market etc).

While I agree with you, would a contactless card be declined at a TfL
gateline for lack of a PIN?

--
Colin Rosenstiel