First direct not offering option of contactless free debit card

jimjames

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

What is the worst case scenario anyhow, accidenally spending 200 for someone elses shopping ? I know its capped somewhere but in any case Im !!!!ed if its more then a fiver


wear it with a tin foil hat and you can just tuck it in there, matching outfit even

Maximum is £20 for contactless I believe

Kildare

Maximum is £20 - I hadn't heard of people having double transactions or scanning 2 cards at once. Not sure why I would carry 2 contactless debit cards around, but then I also always take my card out of my wallet.

Excellent at lunchtime in Pret, in M&S, drive through at McDonalds - whole transaction is much faster and no fiddling with pin numbers or cash!

Cloudane

Just ordered a new card (First Direct support as awesome as ever, through to a human in 1 ring, it's unheard of with any other company!) as it was starting to fail in some readers. I'm glad it has this! I thought it was only Mastercard who did the contactless stuff, whilst FD use Visa. There's only really Greggs and M&S who I can think of who use it, but the more the cards get around the more likely other places are to roll it out.

Problem with Greggs is when I tried they said it's a minimum £5 spend to use a card, making the whole thing kind of pointless, but I'm not sure if that was just the worker behind the counter not knowing with it being so new (my town is kind of still in the dark ages, they find it "special" to be behind the times)

Anyway as for duplicate transactions as far as I know this is highly unlikely if not impossible for the same card, for the same reason as when you do chip+pin - from what I was reading elsewhere (correct me if I'm wrong, it's not an easy one to put into Google words), it's actually just a pre-authorisation, and the transactions are reconciled at close of business. Therefore the worst that can happen is authorising the transaction twice, and it'd still only be taken once.
I guess it's possible you could hand over some physical money and accidentally brush your wallet against the reader, but highly unlikely and I'm pretty sure the cashier would be alerted. In all the instances I've seen so far, the cashier still has to press a key to allow you to use the contactless sensor.

username

Problem with Greggs is when I tried they said it's a minimum £5 spend to use a card, making the whole thing kind of pointless, but I'm not sure if that was just the worker behind the counter not knowing with it being so new (my town is kind of still in the dark ages, they find it "special" to be behind the times)

A lot of it is down to people not knowing.

Customers not knowing what this technology does, and so they do (by rote) sticking the card into the machine and entering their pin.

Shop staff not being aware of the technology - and doing the same as customers, and sticking the card in the machine.

It happens a lot at bars and pubs, where contactless would speed up transactions and is accepted (their machines even say contactless on the outside).

It seems people are also quite fearful of the techology - with talk of tinfoil and rfid proof wallets. I'm sure when c&p was introduced people were fearful they'd get mugged for their pin in sainsbury's...

MoneySaverLog

First direct do a card that is not contactless i have one. They tell me they cannot send me a contactless card. So yes they do do them!!!

Ah we'll their loss of a main account holder. I'll just use it for the regular saver

Archi_Bald

MoneySaverLog wrote: »

First direct do a card that is not contactless i have one. They tell me they cannot send me a contactless card. So yes they do do them!!!

Forgive me, I am confused!

You have a non-contactless FD card, and FD told you they cannot give you a contactless, is that right?

Did you ask them why they cannot give you a contactless card?

(PS: I only use FD for their Regular Saver myself)

MoneySaverLog

Yeah basically they don't trust me. Just saying they do do non contact less cards

JuicyJesus

Problem with Greggs is when I tried they said it's a minimum £5 spend to use a card, making the whole thing kind of pointless, but I'm not sure if that was just the worker behind the counter not knowing with it being so new (my town is kind of still in the dark ages, they find it "special" to be behind the times)

Greggs do have a minimum spend for cards, which is a stupid policy IMO, given the business they're in. When I last went in there it was £3, and considering all I often wanted was a sausage roll it was too much of a pain in the !!!!.

Especially stupid given that contactless is quicker to use than cash.

Cloudane

I thought the whole point of this contactless thing was to eventually replace cash (which would be nice - I have to get mine over the counter in the morning because my chip is worn out). It will absolutely fail if places do minimum transactions.

Gromitt

JuicyJesus wrote: »

Especially stupid given that contactless is quicker to use than cash.

Not in our local greggs it isn't. There are 3 card readers, and they all face the staff which seems to instantly put people off. I've seen one person try to pay by card when he bought a box full of cream cakes - he got the card, showed it to them, they sighed, took it, shoved it in the machine and turned it around to face him. At that point I guess he didn't want to take it out and wave it over the 'contactless' bit.

From my visits I'd guess that 95% - 98% of their business seems to be cash, but maybe they turn them around to discourage people? Another bakery next door to them sells similar food and doesn't have any kind of card services.