Contactless payments not showing

bobblebob

The only disadvantage for me with contactless payments is they dont always show in your pending transactions. Can be abit tricky then to keep an eye pn spending, especially when using it on nights out. Why is this?

For example, go to a friends bar most weekends, have a tab and pay it off if below £30 using contactless. Sometimes the transaction will show in pending, othertimes not. They only have 1 card terminal so always using the same one, and its always connected to wifi. So what determines if it will show as pending or not?

ozaz

Not sure I can give an answer.

But out of interest are you saying this apparent random behaviour only happens when you do contactless payments and never happens when you do chip and pin payments?

How soon after a transaction does pending payments show up? (for transactions where they do appear)

For the last 1.5 years I've been using a bank that instantly debits my account, so I'm not familiar with the pending payments approach.

anna42hmr

in simple terms when you make a payment in a store and use the card, the card will check that it is valid and (if below the merchants floor limit) if there is enough money in the account. Floor limits are set by the merchants/their card machine providers, as such if a payment is below the amount set, will not check if sufficient funds in the account, if they do check the amount, the bank will authorise/decline depending on how much in the account (and will therefore mark the payment as pending, also known as earmarks).

However, if a company does not check the amount, for example if it is below the floor limit, the payment would not be earmarked by your bank until the company claim the payment from the bank (which is why debit cards can take an account into an unplanned limit).

I suspect you may see contactless ones being less frequent on pending payments as most are relatively low value and as such may not be earmarked.

Another way they work, for example is using a debit card at the pay at the pump machines, where companies will check validity of the card but only earmark £1, whereas you could go on to spend £50 for example at the pump.

some info here on how uk cards work , floor limits, contactless etc

http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/cards-transactions/transactional-processing.asp

bobblebob

ozaz wrote: »

Not sure I can give an answer.

But out of interest are you saying this apparent random behaviour only happens when you do contactless payments and never happens when you do chip and pin payments?

How soon after a transaction does pending payments show up? (for transactions where they do appear)

For the last 1.5 years I've been using a bank that instantly debits my account, so I'm not familiar with the pending payments approach.

Chip and Pin always show up as soon as ive paid for something. So do some contactless ones, and then get debited from my account maybe 3 or so days later

bobblebob

anna42hmr wrote: »

in simple terms when you make a payment in a store and use the card, the card will check that it is valid and (if below the merchants floor limit) if there is enough money in the account. Floor limits are set by the merchants/their card machine providers, as such if a payment is below the amount set, will not check if sufficient funds in the account, if they do check the amount, the bank will authorise/decline depending on how much in the account (and will therefore mark the payment as pending, also known as earmarks).

However, if a company does not check the amount, for example if it is below the floor limit, the payment would not be earmarked by your bank until the company claim the payment from the bank (which is why debit cards can take an account into an unplanned limit).

I suspect you may see contactless ones being less frequent on pending payments as most are relatively low value and as such may not be earmarked.

Another way they work, for example is using a debit card at the pay at the pump machines, where companies will check validity of the card but only earmark £1, whereas you could go on to spend £50 for example at the pump.

some info here on how uk cards work , floor limits, contactless etc

http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/cards-transactions/transactional-processing.asp

Cheers, yea makes sense as it tends to be the lower amounts that don't always appear

flavione74

bobblebob wrote: »

Chip and Pin always show up as soon as ive paid for something. So do some contactless ones, and then get debited from my account maybe 3 or so days later

If you want all your contactless purchases to show up among the pending transactions, you should use Apple Pay or Google Pay. AFAIK in both cases, the contactless transaction is always online, i.e. the transaction is approved by the bank, as it would be with chip&pin, whichever amount you pay for.