Contactless Cards Stopped Working

slink85

Biggles wrote: »

That doesn't work; you need to withdraw cash (any amount) to reset the contactless. Either that or make one payment by CnP.

if it needs a pin verification because the limit of contactless uses have been met, then the chip and pin terminal will request the card be entered and pin entered.

you only need to do the ATM or a chip and pin transaction to initially activate the contactless feature of the card when its new.

ThemeOne

Contactless is now working again, at least on one card - haven't tried the other yet.

Prior to it working, I did the following:

1 x ATM balance enquiry
1 x chip & pin transaction
1 x ATM cash withdrawal
1 x ATM "Unlock PIN" (an option I hadn't seen before)

I can only assume one of these, or a combination, has activated the contactless feature.

Still got no clue why they stopped working in the first place though, as I never went near the limit.

Biggles

reclusive46 wrote: »

You can go to an ATM and unlock your PIN (Even if it isn't locked), and this does the trick.

That's useful, I haven't thought of trying that. I don't want to make a CnP transaction with my TSB debit card, obviously, as that won't qualify for the cashback.

ThemeOne

The Unlock PIN option is a bit strange to use though. You'd think it would only show as an option if the PIN was locked, but it seems to appear regardless. Also after pressing this option there's no confirmation or anything - the card just gets returned.

At least that was my experience this morning.

redux

What does it mean, unlock PIN? Is this for changing the number?

ThemeOne

No there was a separate option for changing the PIN. I don't know exactly what it means, just thought it was worth trying in the circumstances!

reclusive46

redux wrote: »

What does it mean, unlock PIN? Is this for changing the number?

It's if you've entered your PIN in wrong 3 times, it'll unlock the chip again. If you haven't locked the pin, it'll reset the counter to 0 attempts. This also resets the contactless.

travellite

Could it be something as simple as you're not holding your card in the correct position over the contactless card reader? Where abouts are you holding the card - over the keypad or over the screen?

ThemeOne

travellite wrote: »

Could it be something as simple as you're not holding your card in the correct position over the contactless card reader? Where abouts are you holding the card - over the keypad or over the screen?

It wasn't that - I'd got over that learning curve from when they did work!

I will probably never know why they stopped working, but they're now fine.