Card clash: if you use contactless to travel, how do you organise your cards?

anotheridiot

Thats the most practical advice.  Thank you

sausage_time

I use my phone, or take out a single card to present (with any payment terminal - not just TFL).

penners324

400ixl said:

As contactless theft becomes more of an issue due to readers becoming commodity products I wouldn't have any contactless payment cards unprotected when travelling on congested public transport. Anyone could walk past you and press a contactless payment machine or card reader against your bag, purse, wallet, pocket and get a payment  or details from the card.

This is why I always use Google Pay (Apple pay works just as well) due to it requiring the app to be active in order to respond to contactless payment requests. You can also store loyalty cards etc in your digital wallet as well if you feel inclined to share your data in that way. All of my physical cards are then protected from RFID readers unless I decide to take them out.

I use a pop up wallet for storing the physical cards. No longer carry a normal wallet at all as everything is either in the pop up wallet (which is easily carried more securely in the front pocket) or on the phone.

You worry far too much. To make a card reader work you need an account with them. Thus any dodgy transactions are directly linked to that account. Not worth it for scammers as it opens up their details to the card company and thus the police 

Gerry1

penners324 said:

You worry far too much. To make a card reader work you need an account with them. Thus any dodgy transactions are directly linked to that account. Not worth it for scammers as it opens up their details to the card company and thus the police 

Nope.

By the same logic I wouldn't keep receiving umpteen calls per month from The Bank telling me that my account is being attacked and that I need to transfer all my money to the safe account they've thoughtfully just opened for me elsewhere.

sausage_time

Contactless fraud is mostly criminals using lost or stolen cards up the the limit where a PIN might be required (or the missing card is reported). 

I have absolutely no concern about presenting my card or phone to a reader, and do not worry in the slightest about a bad person skimming my details because that information would be of no use to them.

Martin_the_Unjust

Gerry1 said:

penners324 said:

You worry far too much. To make a card reader work you need an account with them. Thus any dodgy transactions are directly linked to that account. Not worth it for scammers as it opens up their details to the card company and thus the police 

Nope.

By the same logic I wouldn't keep receiving umpteen calls per month from The Bank telling me that my account is being attacked and that I need to transfer all my money to the safe account they've thoughtfully just opened for me elsewhere.

Umpteen calls a month? 

I’ve never had one, what am I doing right that you aren’t?

penners324

Tak the card out of my wallet first

Nasqueron

Gerry1 said:

penners324 said:

You worry far too much. To make a card reader work you need an account with them. Thus any dodgy transactions are directly linked to that account. Not worth it for scammers as it opens up their details to the card company and thus the police 

Nope.

By the same logic I wouldn't keep receiving umpteen calls per month from The Bank telling me that my account is being attacked and that I need to transfer all my money to the safe account they've thoughtfully just opened for me elsewhere.

Scammers do these calls / texts precisely because stuff like someone going around waving a card reader at people's pockets not only is highly impractical, the scam idea just doesn't work. Any card reader has to have some sort of merchant account and be linked to a bank account to get the funds - that alone is going to block the criminals from trying it as they can easily be traced and caught. Criminals want to be invisible and untraceable, someone going around waving even a small card reader is noticeable, they'll get seen = bad for them; they wave the card around, anyone with more than 1 card is potentially going to get conflicted reads and they get nothing as one card cannot be picked up; it needs someone with contactless enabled on the card and sufficient funds to steal it; many people get instant notifications when a payment is made - on a train it'll flag up a security issue etc etc. In short, the idea of people going around with a card reader, stealing £20/£50/£100 here and there is bad for the criminal and essentially impossible to do. Worst case, just get an RFID blocking wallet and you get nothing anyway, even if the scam were feasible.