Contactless Payments dont show up in available balance!!!

iainUK

dr_adidas01 wrote: »

Strange that I always get one when making contactless payments!!

You don't get a card receipt for paying contactless, whereas you do for a normal debit card payment. Yet the till receipt, showing the items you purchased, is seperate and you should always get on of those. I think that's where the confusion has come. Also some retailers, like supermarkets, don't use seperate card receipts anyway.

iainUK

Archi_Bald wrote: »

It's only a small mis-informed group of people that have in recent years decided that 'available balance' equates to money available to spend.

Are you really happy that this statement is accurate?

My bank actively promote the convenience of mobile and Internet banking. And they promote the fact that they show pending debit card transactions immediately. Obviously you would need to keep track of cheques, if you are one of the few that even use them or have a chequebook these days, but I think actually a lot of people do see their available balance as useful indicator of the balance they currently have available. The way people bank is changing, cheques have had a massive drop in use, transfers and payments are made faster, debit cards are used more. It is certainly not irresponsible to want to keep track of your balance on Internet banking, and it's not unfair to expect clear information from the banks.

I know some people want to go back to the "good old days" of cheques and cash, but times change and we are not irresponsible or lazy for taking advantage of convenient services and trusting the information that is given to us.

The bottom line is that banks should inform customers that contactless payments will not show in pending debit card transactions as quickly as others do. You may well think it's stupid for people not to know this already, but it wouldn't hurt the banks to let us know.

Bmth100

I track everything in and out of my account. Contact less is inconvenient, I go out of my way to tell them to use chip and PIN if the card is being taken out of my hands. So annoying.

SeduLOUs

Bmth100 wrote: »

I track everything in and out of my account. Contact less is inconvenient, I go out of my way to tell them to use chip and PIN if the card is being taken out of my hands. So annoying.

The card should not be taken out of your hands at all anymore, especially not for contactless - otherwise they could authorise any amount up to £20 without you being able to check it on the machine first!

System

People are responsible for all transactions they authorise on the card.

Most debit cards occasionally do offline transactions which only show up when processed; if you can't handle - get an online debit card like Visa Electron or use cash.

iainUK wrote: »

The bottom line is that banks should inform customers that contactless payments will not show in pending debit card transactions as quickly as others do. You may well think it's stupid for people not to know this already, but it wouldn't hurt the banks to let us know.

[Deleted User]

SeduLOUs wrote: »

The card should not be taken out of your hands at all anymore, especially not for contactless - otherwise they could authorise any amount up to £20 without you being able to check it on the machine first!

Yes, that's annoying in coffee shops, where they say "that's £3.50 please" or whatever, you hand over your card, and the [helpful] person behind the counter just taps it on their reader for you, without letting you see the amount on the display.

Of course, they're trying to be helpful, but it leaves the system wide open for abuse/errors.

username

Yes, that's annoying in coffee shops, where they say "that's £3.50 please" or whatever, you hand over your card, and the [helpful] person behind the counter just taps it on their reader for you, without letting you see the amount on the display.

Of course, they're trying to be helpful, but it leaves the system wide open for abuse/errors.

How would it benefit the cashier? It's certainly not easy to pocket the money, as you can't refund on card machines without a higher level permission card, and even if they did there would be an audit trail. Also, any unknown transactions, report it to your bank. A merchant will soon be aware if someone is fiddling the card machine when they get the bank charging back fraudulently reported transactions,

If it troubles you so much, just ask for a receipt and they'll sort one out for you. I don't mind who taps it on the reader, a payment is payment.

It's worse when the cashier doesn't know of / are afraid to use the contactless functionality and just shove the card in, all this pin entering, dialling out and waiting for authorisation, when the transaction can be completed easily and quickly offline using contactless.

I track everything in and out of my account. Contact less is inconvenient, I go out of my way to tell them to use chip and PIN if the card is being taken out of my hands. So annoying.

A chip and pin transaction doesn't mean anything in terms of available balance. If the transaction is under the retailer's floor limit and the card allows offline authorisation, it won't always phone home and debit it from your available balance.

Transactions sometimes may take longer to be debited if the retailer doesn't submit the transactions for processing in a timely manner (such as not submitting at the end of the day or through technical faults), it is not an issue exclusively to contactless.

I have never known a contactless transaction to take longer to debit than a standard chip and pin or swipe one, it's only international ones that I have sometimes known to have taken longer.

mwarby

For instance Tesco transactions don't show online as pending (for me , lloyds account)unless they're over £50. Asda pay at pump only shows £1 pending. Chip and pin increases the chances of the transaction showing, but it won't always show or show the actual amount

iainUK

Heng_Leng wrote: »

People are responsible for all transactions they authorise on the card.

Most debit cards occasionally do offline transactions which only show up when processed; if you can't handle - get an online debit card like Visa Electron or use cash.

This has got nothing to do with lack of responsibility or being unable to "handle" things, as I suspect you are well aware. It's simply about banks giving straightforward information. When a bank promotes the fact that they display "pending debit card transactions... to better help you keep track of your money" then people are not stupid or irresponsible for using these tools. All I'm saying is there needs to be more clarity, and I think that's blatantly obvious, but even if you disagree I don't see how it would do you any harm.

There seems to be a very odd theme of people wanting to get personal on here and quite heated disagreements. This isn't politics, we're not discussing war or the economy, someone just asked for some advice on Contactless payments lol maybe have a bit of perspective.

Hazzanet

iainUK wrote: »

This has got nothing to do with lack of responsibility or being unable to "handle" things, as I suspect you are well aware.

I think most of us who have been on here a while are a bit long in the tooth when it comes to things like this. Subjects such as this one tend to come up time and time again. The "available balance 'problem'" has been discussed ad-infinitum over the years and the general advice is to keep your own records; this way you know what is going through the account. That said, it is easy to miss/forget a transaction, so yes, accidents can happen but keeping accurate records is the sure way to avoid issues where something hasn't shown in the available balance. Furthermore keeping a buffer in any account also is a way to avoid such situations.

iainUK wrote: »

It's simply about banks giving straightforward information. When a bank promotes the fact that they display "pending debit card transactions... to better help you keep track of your money" then people are not stupid or irresponsible for using these tools.

If that's what they're saying, then perhaps it's an issue to take up with their respective marketing teams.

Again, offline transactions do occur, oftentimes with contactless, other times where a retailer has a floor limit. The bank doesn't know about these transactions hence they cannot tell you about them. What is needed is a fundamental shake-up of the EFTPOS payment system so all transactions are online. This, unfortunately, is unlikely to happen in the near future, and also would remove the possibility to use cards in certain circumstance where online authorisation is not possible - a potential "undesirable" consequence.

iainUK wrote: »

All I'm saying is there needs to be more clarity, and I think that's blatantly obvious, but even if you disagree I don't see how it would do you any harm.

Indeed, they do need to be transparent. Natwest are fairly clear which is nice:

https://supportcentre.natwest.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3952/~/what-is-the-difference-between-balance-and-available%3F

The Available balance could contain a credit balance coming in but not yet showing, and will include any agreed overdraft that you have with us. It could also take account of pending payments such as debit card (POS) transactions coming out. These are items you have bought recently which are not yet showing on your statement, although the Available balance doesn't include contactless card payments that you don't yet see.

iainUK wrote: »

There seems to be a very odd theme of people wanting to get personal on here and quite heated disagreements. This isn't politics, we're not discussing war or the economy, someone just asked for some advice on Contactless payments lol maybe have a bit of perspective.

Hopefully you won't see this as a personal attack, just a reasoned discussion