People need to be educated about contactless payments

AstonSmith

It is a pain. The machine at my work does indeed do the beep hints, one long beep for card read OK and two short beeps for insert card. If I hear the latter I quickly point out what's happened, and the screen also says to insert the card. That's all good.

What I don't like, what's the biggest pain to me is when a card is presented contactlessly, single long beep, only to be declined. Declines give a single short beep. It does say to insert the card on the screen for about 3 seconds, but the customer is not usually looking at the reader anymore and it's an effort to convince them that I'm not trying to take their money twice.

Rather than educating customers, the UI experience needs to be revised. The font on readers needs to be much bigger. The sounds louder and more memorable (perhaps a declining scale of tones for failure, and reverse for success). And most of all, if the bank wants the card to be inserted, instead of a flat decline, how about a follow-on "sorry, please insert your card for PIN confirmation"?

[Deleted User]

When contactless was first dreamt up it was meant for micro payments only to allow trendy city hipsters to get their coffee on the way to office, with all payments stored up and polled together at night. Instead, every transaction is now authorised on the spot and everyone has to wait while this happened. Also everyone wants to use contactless for every card transaction.

briskbeats

Torry_Quine said:

As someone with hearing problems I can often not hear the beep so can't tell if it's one or two. It's worse just now not being able to wear my hearing aid with my mask. People like me are really struggling.

Get some mask extenders from Amazon or eBay. Put the mask hoops onto the hooks on extender. Frees the ears. Most medical staff wear these. They are made from soft plastic 

ZeroSum

Tesco's card only machines dont work
It asks for card, beeps then nothing.
You have to tap a 2nd time before it goes through. It's so annoying 

Mnoee

Deleted_User said:

When contactless was first dreamt up it was meant for micro payments only to allow trendy city hipsters to get their coffee on the way to office, with all payments stored up and polled together at night. Instead, every transaction is now authorised on the spot and everyone has to wait while this happened. Also everyone wants to use contactless for every card transaction.

Your complaining about the fact that we can pay without touching a pin pad that's been used by hundreds of people a day during a pandemic? I mean, I've heard everything now.

[Deleted User]

Mnoee said:

Deleted_User said:

When contactless was first dreamt up it was meant for micro payments only to allow trendy city hipsters to get their coffee on the way to office, with all payments stored up and polled together at night. Instead, every transaction is now authorised on the spot and everyone has to wait while this happened. Also everyone wants to use contactless for every card transaction.

Your complaining about the fact that we can pay without touching a pin pad that's been used by hundreds of people a day during a pandemic? I mean, I've heard everything now.

Where am I complaining? This isn't my thread. 

Mnoee

Deleted_User said:

Mnoee said:

Deleted_User said:

When contactless was first dreamt up it was meant for micro payments only to allow trendy city hipsters to get their coffee on the way to office, with all payments stored up and polled together at night. Instead, every transaction is now authorised on the spot and everyone has to wait while this happened. Also everyone wants to use contactless for every card transaction.

Your complaining about the fact that we can pay without touching a pin pad that's been used by hundreds of people a day during a pandemic? I mean, I've heard everything now.

Where am I complaining? This isn't my thread. 

Just read like a moan to me, what with your talk of 'trendy city hipsters' and how 'everyone wants to use contactless for every card transaction'.  (It's because there's a pandemic, no-one wants to die.) 

kuratowski

And 'cos it's quicker.

PixelPound

kuratowski said:

And 'cos it's quicker.

Oh, I don't know. I can type 1111 pretty fast 

eastcorkram

ZeroSum said:

Tesco's card only machines dont work
It asks for card, beeps then nothing.
You have to tap a 2nd time before it goes through. It's so annoying 

If you're using a Tesco card, that first beep is just to register the club card. The second one is to pay.