UK Consumers Reporting Contactless Payment Errors

leathered writes "The BBC reports that some customers of UK retailer Marks and Spencer have reported that the store's contactless payment terminals have debited their cards despite being in their bags or pockets, sometimes paying twice when they have used another payment method. The cards are supposed to work only when the card comes within 4cm of the terminal. Customers of fast-food chain Pret a Manger have been reporting similar problems, and in both cases cited the customers weren't even aware they had been issued with NFC-enabled cards by their bank."

Re:Payment without user confirmation

[beelsebob]

If I had mod points, you would get them... I really genuinely don't get why no one saw this coming.

Re:Wisdom of the paranoid ages

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy y'all,

is tin foil available any more? i looked the other day and only found aluminum foil. i have an old roll of tin foil stashed in the back of one of my closets that i got from my mom when i 1st went to college. i aint seen any _tin_ foil in decades ...

take care,
lee

Re:Why

[willb]

Hate those stupid gas pumps. Useless if your card is from outside the US.

Actually there is a way to use this even if your card is from outside the US. For example I have cards from Canada and the convention is to use the numbers from your postal code and add 00 at the end. It works well. If yours is from another country google around, they might have a convention on how to get the "ZIP" code you're supposed to use.

Re:Double payments

[ericloewe]

Some POS systems are not integrated with the card payment terminal. You click "visa" for instance, and the POS system assumes a valid card payment has been made. The payment is then made in a seperate terminal which issues a receipt for the payment, which should be kept with the purchase receipt.

Re:Double payments

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the good old USA where we still have to use checks for many scenarios, have credit cards without even an attempt at authentication (yes, chip and PIN implementations have been flawed, but we don't even try here) and where anyone who knows your number can apparently charge on your card and all you can do is dispute the charges and get a new number (I've had to do this 3 times now over 30 years of having cards). I'd love to use Google Wallet on my phone. At least it makes you approve the transaction and isn't automatic. But of course even at the few retailers that accept it, it doesn't work about half the time.

We in the US are very backwards on payment systems. The idiotic companies claim it will cost too much to modernize. Sure, it must have cost too much everywhere else too - that's why they all stagnated. Oh, wait... They didn't. It is the same thing with measurement systems. We can't possibly modernize and use the new stuff. They always claim either that it costs too much or that we have too many stupid people or something. Idiots in charge...