Having had my Visa Debit card blocked twice in as many weeks, I'm beginning to question if our current "Plastic" cards are fit for purpose. A somewhat long story follows with a question at the end:
About 2 weeks ago, Skinny decided not to honour my perfectly valid Visa card. I contacted my bank to find out why my card was being rejected. They let me know that some businesses won't take payment on cards that are approaching expiry and Skinny, apparently, won't take payment if the card expires in the following month. The card was due to expire in 8 weeks!
I find it ridiculous to reject payments that far from expiry! What would you do if you only had access to one credit card?
I switched cards on the account and in the process the Skinny interface initiated three transactions in quick succession, of which two should not have occurred. Another long story, but it took four hours (yes 4) to sort that out. These transactions triggered my bank to block the newly registered card and warned me via text message. Thankfully, a quick reply text was all that was needed to unblock the card.
My new card arrived a week or two later (they sent it out early) - all good once I used it to make a local purchase via EFTPOS. (This card had the same card number but different CVV)
A little over a week later, I receive a text message from my bank:
We've blocked your Visa Debit Card due to some suspicious transactions to Google YouTube Super. If this was you, please reply AUTHORISED. If not, please give us a call on #### or pop into your local branch
These were not my transactions, so a call was made. Apparently, the card number was/had been used on multiple (21) relatively small transactions in Australia. The bank's only option was to cancel the card and re-issue me a new one. How these transactions were being validated without the CVV (unless they had 'cracked' it), I don't know. These were Google transactions, so I would expect them to have been validated?
Luckily, I was due to travel to town - a little over two hours round trip! So I went into my closest branch and received a new card (with a new card number this time). Another EFTPOS transaction at a local shop and it's good to go again.
I've no doubt there are others who have had similar experiences?
I can't remember the last time I used cash, though I always carry some. For me, a cashless society mostly works.
The discussion I had with my bank suggests that these type of blocks, due to unauthorised transactions, are on the rise significantly.
So what is the future of "money"? How can transactions be made without inconvenience, but still be secure and safe from unauthorised access?
Really just a topic starter and I felt I needed to tell the story.
A big part of the problem is we've handed over control of our money to Visa and other international giants. Things worked a lot better when it was all EFTPOS. But online payments and the convenience of pay wave have won out.
Unfortunately there's no easy way back.
I'd argue the swing back to EFTPOS has already started. The greedy paywave fees have normalised surcharges, which encourage people to switch back to EFTPOS. I for one know my behavior is changing.
It's not even about the cost. A surcharge is basically a question: would you like to make a donation to the bank and credit card companies?
One main reason that this was allowed to happen is that the implementation of online Eftpos spent too much time in the "we can't agree" phase.
Had the banks sorted out the online Eftpos thing 10 years ago, Visa / Mastercard would have missed out in NZ. But alas no one could fully agree on the how. Now online Eftpos is only half supported.
Yeah, proper online EFTPOS is still hard to find. Instead we get Polipay crap. The idea of typing bank account login credentials into a third party website is almost as terrifying as the website scraping technology they use to process the payment.
Yep Poil is not supported by your bank. If your credentials are compromised after using Poli, you are not entitled to any compensation.
The absolute worst thing is Poli is an option when renewing your RUC mileage.....WTF NZTA, that is effectively official endorsement of breaking your banks terms of service.
They aren't the only government service using Poli and whatever the windcave version is called.
I'm certainly tending to prefer online EFTPOS where I see it. I like the process of confirming with the bank that I authorise the charge before it's allowed to happen. I've struck the odd technical issue here and there with implementations, but it's getting better.
It's depressing how long it's taken, though, which is basically how a system as terrible as POLi got a foot-hold.
As for paywave, I still use it sometimes at supermarket self checkouts because I figure they're big enough to say screw you to the banks, but I don't really use it elsewhere.
I used it through the NFC chip in my phone for a bit too, but went completely off that when ASB decided I'd have to connect it through Google Pay if I wanted to keep using it. Right now there's no way in hell I want Google to have anything to do with knowing exactly what I'm spending money on day to day, given everything else they collect before profiling and selling the ability to manipulate me.
I have literally never used online EFTPOS, and I don't even recall seeing it anywhere. I'm just aware it exists, hopefully it becomes more widely available.
I tend to use paywave when there is no surcharge. Places like supermarket chains will for sure be negotiating to get the best deal for themselves, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is near the break even point for the banks/credit card companies. Because who is gonna want a Visa card if you can't even use it at major supermarkets?
But for smaller places, surcharges are so common that I assume if you don't have one (but you do have paywave) then you probably took the one fee deal from the provider and get charged the same whether someone uses paywave or not. If it's a little mum & dad shop I've always tended to use EFTPOS over credit because I know the credit fees are high, and getting 1% back as a reward doesn't really matter to me when I'm only spending $20.
A bit like you, I started using it and telling everyone else about it and helping them set it up, then did a hard stop when Google Pay got involved. Like you, I don't want Google collecting even more data on me than what they have by having their analytics tool on the majority of sites on the internet (ok, I admit it, they don't actually get that data from me because of ad blocker + DNS sinkhole but I still don't want them getting my payment data).
It might just be a coincidence of the retailers I frequent, but every so often I come across a new one. Maybe it's getting more enticing with more banks signing up, plus a third party payment provider or two.
Mighty Ape was an early adopter and I found something cheap to buy there just so I could test it out. Ascent and PBTech are where I tend to order most of my geek stuff from lately and they both support it. At least one of the pizza chains (Dominoes?) supports it for payment in their app.
I've hit a couple of early snags, though. When Ascent first implemented it, it didn't accept my payment because it didn't like me having a 0 at the front of my phone number. I guess they were converting it to an integer for some reason and didn't think of that. They fixed it when I reported it.
Also a couple of times with ordering a pizza I've found the company never got confirmation that I'd paid. In that implementation it relies on me switching back to the app before a timeout, so the auto process can complete, but it has to be after I've been to my bank app to confirm the payment. I've been caught out by this at least twice because I didn't realise the order hadn't gone through for ages, then had to order and pay again, then had to wait ages to get the refund for the first one. Consequently several times I've gone back to credit cards for the few delivery pizza orders I put in. I figure they intentionally obscure the prices so much that I don't really care if they have to absorb an extra fee. I'd still rather use online EFTPOS if I felt I could trust it with them, though.
Interesting! I buy from PB Tech and Mighty Ape on occasion, I must just not have noticed the option as I'd already have saved payment details.
It's interesting if you don't return to the site the money transfers but not the order. It seems like a failed design, it must happen all the time.
Yes I hope that's purely an issue with their app's implementation, rather than something broken with online EFTPOS's flow generally. I've never struck a similar problem with other retailers, although for others I'm usually buying through a browser on a desktop system rather than a smartphone app, so you don't get quite the same requirement of completely switching away from it to approve the payment in your banking app.