Contactless cards and authorisation

2017dh

Hi, thanks for all the answers. I finally spoke to someone helpful at Natwest today and they said the following:
- if there are funds in your account the transaction, up to £30, will be authorised
- if there isn't, i.e. you're overdrawn, it won't
She explained that it's basically an on/off mechanism...regardless of whether there's 10p in the account, and you're spending £20, it'll get authorised. If you 0.01p overdrawn, it won't.
Hope that makes sense.

System

2017dh wrote: »

Hi, thanks for all the answers. I finally spoke to someone helpful at Natwest today and they said the following:
- if there are funds in your account the transaction, up to £30, will be authorised
- if there isn't, i.e. you're overdrawn, it won't
She explained that it's basically an on/off mechanism...regardless of whether there's 10p in the account, and you're spending £20, it'll get authorised. If you 0.01p overdrawn, it won't.
Hope that makes sense.

It depends if the card requires or the retailer asks for online authorisation.

Only then is it decision taken by the bank, most are offline and the bank doesn't get a choice.

Online debit cards always ask for authorisation

WillPS

daveyjp wrote: »

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.

Actually the old system (Avantix Mobile) would *never* check online - if your card required online authorisation for whatever reason (e.g. it always does/old Electron; you'd reached the cap on your chip - whatever) you would be straight up declined. If they wanted to (and their company had the facility), they could do a manual transaction over the phone - by manual I mean they would key in your card details over the phone.

The new system can check online, reception permitting.