Contactless cards and authorisation

JuicyJesus

Jlawson118 wrote: »

I tried this out the other week with my Halifax account. There was absolutely nothing in the account and I attempted to pay for something with Apple Pay and I was straight up rejected. So it does check your balance first

Apple Pay always authorises online is why. Actual contactless cards only authorise for over £15.

jamie_02

Monzo (which, as an aside, reached 100,000 users yesterday) explained how authorisation of card payments work here: http://brnt.cr/3SecSandwich
They authorise every transaction, in order for a notification to appear on your phone (which appears usually quicker than it takes to print the card receipt) and the article implies this feature is programmed onto the card which demand the card machine go online to authorise. It seems the only reason the major banks don't do this is their old computer systems find it easier not to (and, of course, they make a lot of money when people breach into an extra overdraft)

JuicyJesus

jamie_02 wrote: »

Monzo (which, as an aside, reached 100,000 users yesterday) explained how authorisation of card payments work here: http://brnt.cr/3SecSandwich
They authorise every transaction, in order for a notification to appear on your phone (which appears usually quicker than it takes to print the card receipt) and the article implies this feature is programmed onto the card which demand the card machine go online to authorise. It seems the only reason the major banks don't do this is their old computer systems find it easier not to (and, of course, they make a lot of money when people breach into an extra overdraft)

It's more because all-online contactless like Monzo is slower for the end user (and might not work at all in cases where there's no network connection) and also sometimes more expensive for merchants.

jamie_02

Monzo cope with offline, as the article demonstrates. The delay, if any, is negligible and certainly wouldn't affect customer throughput at the point of sale. There is more of a delay to count change for cash transactions. I wouldn't know the true cost to those retailers not on permanent internet connections, but I'd wager the banks wouldn't think twice switching on online authorisation for all their cards if it saved them money/fraud.

JuicyJesus

jamie_02 wrote: »

I'd wager the banks wouldn't think twice switching on online authorisation for all their cards if it saved them money/fraud.

The thing is then by that logic it clearly doesn't because they don't.

Stevie_Palimo

Don't know if it just me but I would not be using or even attempt to use a card that had no credit left or no money in the account in the first place.

Seems quite strange that people think it can be a mistake to not know the balance of an account or seek to blame a bank when the running of account is down to each individual account holder alone.

daveyjp

Up until recently paying by debit card on board my regular train journey only worked about half the time due to bad mobile signal on the line I use.

A few weeks ago the guards ticketing and payment system changed to contactless and there is never a problem paying as the contactless device does not communicate for authorisation.

Authorisation may be needed if the PIN hasn't been used for a while, but use of cashpoints generally means this is a rare event.

Aquamania

molerat wrote: »

JuicyJesus wrote: »

That's because all contactless transactions over £15 now seek authorisation.

I don't think that is correct, most do but the £25.50 I spent in Tesco this morning is not pending on my TSB CC.

I may be wrong, but I think possibly the keyword there was 'seek'.

If there was no connection, and hence no authorisation (as opposed to a rejection), I guess the shop may continue to process it as it would be under their floor limit.:)

JuicyJesus

Stevie_Palimo wrote: »

Don't know if it just me but I would not be using or even attempt to use a card that had credit left or money in the account in the first place.

Too right, I prefer cards without available funds.

jamie_02

JuicyJesus wrote: »

The thing is then by that logic it clearly doesn't because they don't.

I agree, it doesn't now, but my point was if it started to mean the banks saved money they wouldn't think twice about passing the cost of online authorisation onto retailers anyway.