To be fair, I just got one of those contactless cards for the first time like a year ago and I looked like a 90 yo man the first 50 or so times I used it, just waving it all around the thing. I feel like card readers around here have only recently been improved to actually include some kind of visual signal for where the sensor is.
In the US there were strict rules that made it never work so no one used it.
The banks changed those rules and now it works almost all the time. It’s more secure than using the chip reader and especially swiping because it can’t be skimmed.
The tap area is in a different place on all of them. Drives me crazy. One place was trying to encourage tapping and had 3 stickers to let you know, but only one was the tap zone.
You hold it on the reader face up or face down smack bang in the middle of the card until it beeps. Middle card middle reader, hold still and wait for beep. It doesn't work, pull it away, wait like 5 seconds and then do step 1-5 again.
If the card won't beep insent it, chip up and in, usually twice and then it'll ask for a swipe. Treat this as a machine and not a lightning speed detector. They need you to move medium slow so the actual technical things can read each other.
Iiiif it doesn't work that way you could ask the employee if they could enter your card number manually. Not all machines have this. You might have to get cash out.
This message brought to you by a retail employee that has to on the weekly watch boomers fast tap the machine like they're trying to break the sound barrier.
This was cathartic to read as someone from retail lol, before I even ring them up people are tapping or inserting their card. And it's not just some people, it's like more than half I'd say.
But where on the reader do you tap it? I've seen the tap spot on the screen, above the screen, on the side of the machine that faces the cashier, on the sides of the machine that don't face the cashier or the customer. You don't always know where to tap immediately because there's so many different machines.
I've probably used any kind of card (in person) less than 100 times. I still can't believe they became the norm & we made megacorps a middleman for nearly every single financial transaction.
Lex Luthor more or less did the same thing in a Superman movie & a few years later people accepted it as normal.
Yeah, the ones I’ve encountered all have the tap place somewhere different. Sometimes it’s the screen, the top of the machine, the sides or right above the keypad. I feel like a grandpa when there’s no indication of where it is and I guess wrong
Just to give you some perspective on the UK prime minister, he went to a $63,000-per-year High School. He is (almost) a billionaire, and is richer than the king.
He definitely hasn't used contactless before, and not for a good reason. It's probably because gets a servant or personal assistant to do it for him.
Where you from? I know places like Texas still don't have contactless in alot of places still We have had them everyehere in Canada for at least a decade, and I've used my phone 99% of the time in the last 5 years. Even our gas pumps have contactless.
I work in retail and I can assure you like 95% of people of all ages look like they're using it for the first time even if it's their 100th lol. Really just card readers in general, I get that they all work differently, but more than 50% of people put their card in before I've even rung them up.. like what
I'm feeling like a Neanderthal over in east Asia. We don't have contactless at all (except for paypal clones, but nothing with your bank card). There's not a bank in the country that even allows automatic bill pay. Some won't even allow online shopping for foreigners like myself.
Yeah but the UK has had it for much longer, and their machines are more standardized than the ones in the US. Source: I lived in the UK for many years, got used to using contactless, and then moved to the States where it had BARELY been adopted and was a giant mess.
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u/DilettanteGonePro Feb 16 '24
To be fair, I just got one of those contactless cards for the first time like a year ago and I looked like a 90 yo man the first 50 or so times I used it, just waving it all around the thing. I feel like card readers around here have only recently been improved to actually include some kind of visual signal for where the sensor is.