On Sat, 25 Feb 2017 19:16:49 +0000, 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).
Neil
Cash is so simple and fast. Perhaps not as fast as contactless but I
will not use contactless for lots of reasons. I have two such cards
and hope, when they are replaced to get new cards without that
dangerous and vulnerable feature.
Do you and others that use traceable payments not value just a tiny
bit of privacy? I have 4 credit cards (and a debit card) each used
for very specific purposes so no one creditor knows all about me.
Guy Gorton