No cards, thanks, we're contactless-less: UK supermarket giants hit by card payment TITSUP* Shoppers keen to avoid that personal touch have been faced with multi-day card payment problems at UK grocery giants Morrisons and the Co-Op. The glitches kicked off on Sunday as some stores struggled to process payments. Worryingly, the issues persisted through Monday and, as of today, those seeking to tap a card in exchange …
34% of people surveyed have had their cash refused at least once since March 2020.
The payment method you use is only as effective as its acceptance by others.
More importantly - why do all these huge stores, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds to operate, not have a backup card processing system - even if it means swapping the card readers and costing them a few % extra? If ONLY Morrisons/Co-op went down, that meant that all the other processors worked just fine. But they just don't consider it important enough to implement a redundant system for a business-critical system. If they had, you'd never have heard a thing about it, because it would have "just worked". Maybe other places do exactly that, which is why they didn't go down.
In the toss-up between taking 98% of their customer's money, and refusing them service without cash, they opted to refuse them service.
But, sorry, cash is by no means a panacea and costs just as much as cards to handle safely, account for errors, theft, fraud, etc.
I if I went in somewhere that refused to accept cash then they would loose out on a sale, so more stupid of them. This story shows that payment providers, banks, telcos can have problems which means card payments stop working so its good to have a cash backup option available.
And when it comes to small independent shops such as convenience stores or cafes ill always try and pay in cash, as paying for a loaf of bread or a coffee with card can mean they can be loosing out on a big chunk of their profit to merchant fees
It might seem backwards, but what the card companies take can be less than what the bank charges to handle cash from the shop. Banks actively try, both through pricing and availability to leave smaller shops with no choice but to accept cards and discourage or even drop paying by cash.
For some types of larger public business, for example a busy hotel bar, cash becomes a liability. One hotel near me is in a very busy part of town and that makes the risks with large amounts of cash even worse. After the staff were robbed at gunpoint the second time, the bar simply said "payment by card only". It's annoying sometimes, but the place is still packed every evening.
And if I go somewhere that refuses to accept card, same thing. In fact I've done it quite a lot.
Mainly because I don't carry cash (good luck, muggers, even my phone is worthless), secondly because I see no need to convert card into cash to then immediately hand someone when I can just card it, and thirdly because handling cash/change is a pain in the butt (especially in COVID-times - the stuff that always has traces of illicit drugs on because it's been through so many hands, and you want to put it into my hand with your hand? Nope.)
Then there's a fourth - I have a record of every transaction, which I deem to be necessary. It helps my personal accounting (having been living on my own for the last three years, I have been strapped and my spreadsheets were vital for the first year, and having bank data to see what I'm expecting to spend exactly when is a god-send... and the ONE forced cash transaction I had was the exception to the rule), and it helps accountability (no arguing over whether I gave you a ten or a twenty) and it also stops cash-only trades (sorry, Mr Window Cleaner, but I don't have cash... oh look... you're walking away... almost like you don't want to know about declaring your income on a bank statement...)
Even antiques markets and boot sales take card now. Hell, I have a card reader in my car for if someone is desperate to give me money (I do a lot of "I'll buy that online because I'll get the right thing for cheaper, and you have no idea how to use a computer, then you can pay me for it when it arrives" for older friends and relatives who - get this - get such duff deals because they'll only ever deal in cash, but they trust me and I save them money).
The fees thing is really - short of Mastercard massive post-Brexit opportunistic hikes - not a factor. Handling cash, taking the risk, banking it, running a till, etc. is expensive and card fees are pitched at that exact same expense for a reason.
Last time I used a bank branch was to literally cash in 3 years worth of spare/loose change that I had accumulated because I hate carrying cash and don't even have a wallet that holds coins (a few notes, yes, coins, no).
It added up to £60.
It's been a year since then... no change at all in my house.
They don't do it because if you are using an integrated POS solution (the ones where you don't have to type the amount n the card reader)you have to be able to reconfigure all the systems to use the new card readers, with the possibility that the non-technical people on site manage to make a bigger mess...
And of course you need separate internet access (and technology: dsl, cable, fiber, 6G, ...) for each system, just to ensure that the issue at end is not related to your ISP.
Add all the costs, and at some time it becomes more economical to close for half a day than to provide an alternate payment solution besides cash.
I can imagine a few ways to deal with this, but obviously if they felt they could get more money out of it they would already be doing it.
The POS should be setup to work with multiple readers/back ends. Doesn't help if the EPOS goes down.
Larger places could run 2 independant systems, at every other till. Worst case you have slightly longer lines when half go offline.
Internet back end is normally leased lines and such with SLA, and sometimes with failover. I know a few places that used to use satellite backup, though mostly 4G now.
Even BT Business Broadband (which is basically a glorified off the shelf consumer broadband) gives away a 4G dongle that goes in the router which is suitable for smaller companies.
Cash machine use fell 38% in 2020 due to Covid contact fears
Decline in withdrawals could lead to closure of ATMs or having to impose fees, warns operator Link
Yeah, I used the Co-op at 10am (whisky and cat treat run) and contactless was fine. I'd taken cash just in case because of the importance of the shop.
One thing I hate about Morrisons self-service is you have to touch the screen to select contactless, the same wee square everyone else touches. Kind of defeats the purpose, though I just poke it with a pencil.
"One thing I hate about Morrisons self-service is you have to touch the screen to select contactless, the same wee square everyone else touches. Kind of defeats the purpose, though I just poke it with a pencil."
So, why not use the anti-bacterial fluid (usually in a pump-action bottle) on your way OUT of the store (as well as using it as you enter and grab your trolley or basket)?
> the anti-bacterial fluid...on your way OUT of the store...
I do, but by then any germs are on your hands, your card, the bag handles and inside your wallet...possibly not a high risk, but unnecessary. @Danny 2 makes a good point about sanitising the most likely collection places.
Don't do this --------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
If this incident had affected withdrawal of cash as well then this would have been an armageddon sampler.
IIRC Waitrose had a similar problem a while back. My local Waitrose is quite a distance from the nearest bank cashpoint and there were a lot of disgruntled customers.
Disgruntled customers at Waitrose? That will never do, dear oh dear.
Our co-op in deepest Hampshire was also offline around 6pm on Monday night. As I and a few others were Q'ing at the checkout they announced on the bing-bong-box that it was cash only. From conversations it sounded like the card machines had been up and down all day.
I didn't help the queue as all I had was a Bank of Scotland £20 note, which the two teenage girls behind the checkouts had never seen before. Cue being looked at like an alien while they pondered what it was I had handed them. You'd think I would be used to it after 25 years of living here, but it still winds me up.
Of course the designs on banknotes, and hence their validity, are changed occasionally partly to flesh out criminals that might otherwise hoard cash for the longer term. Ok, banks will swap old designs out for you, whilst potentially tagging the transaction with your identity.
Not even in Scotland. Legal tender is not really germane to accepting or refusing payments however, according to the Bank of England.
"You might have heard someone in a shop say: “But it’s legal tender!”. Most people think it means the shop has to accept the payment form. But that’s not the case.
A shop owner can choose what payment they accept. If you want to pay for a pack of gum with a £50 note, it’s perfectly legal to turn you down. Likewise for all other banknotes, it’s a matter of discretion. If your local corner shop decided to only accept payments in Pokémon cards that would be within their right too. But they’d probably lose customers.
Legal tender has a narrow technical meaning which has no use in everyday life."
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/what-is-legal-tender
For many years after decimalisation the Kings Head in Upper Street Islington still insisted on referring to prices in pounds, shillings and pence. They didn't go as far as accepting only the old coins and notes though. Confusing for patrons who were not "in the know".
Indeed it is unclear.
Maybe the RNG gods just went bad for coop and morrions and it was time for everybody to use a chip and pin refresh operation (or some glitch made it so).
Contactless does not work forever and the appropriate response to it failing is not to try again, but to use a chip/pin payment.
From my point of view if it's no cards then it's no go. It occured to my coop 6 odd months ago (equipment failure), but they had the sense to put up a sign on the door to deter you away rather than waste your time (and the cash point still worked). But really, come on can they not fall back on offline transactions? No, becuase the processors passed the fraud reponsibilioty back onto the shop rather than the processor so they won;t take the risk. I used to love those imprint machines too!
Lidl seem to have done sometihng to their self-service tills recently which is highly annoying.
Previously, if the bank had decided to refuse a contactless transaction and request a Chip and PIN [1] transaction to 'reset the clock', the card reader would tell you this and you could then proceed and insert your card quite happily to make payment.
But now, instead, when the contactless payment is refused, the system goes into a panic and the till says "Seek assistance", so that you have to wait for the till supervisor to come over and press the necessary magic buttons to let you try again. Not exactly progress!
[1] And sometimes the reader decides to get even more confused and so asks you to swipe your card's magstrip, rather than insert the chip, and so you would have to do a signature transaction, except the staff then just authorise the transaction rather than making you sign, probably because it is a situation that they rarely encounter and so haven't really been trained how to deal with it.
"If this affected all card type transactions then the "Contactless-less" is a bit meaningless."
Not sure what the cause was, but standing in a queue in the Co-Op on Monday, a guy in front had about 5 goes using NFC on his phone before eventually giving up. Unfortunately, it was a filling station shop and he'd just put about 30 quids worth of fuel in. Luckily, it's a very small town, they knew him, so he filled out a form promising to come back later with a card. My Co-Op direct debit card worked immediately and without issue directly after he left the till. That makes me wonder if it was some interconnect between the payment processor and certain card issuers (assuming that NFC on a phone is handle by some sort of card issuer too)
...doesn't necessarily mean Cash only. If you look closely at your contactless card, you'll find a chip in one end and a black stripe on the reverse. These allow you to use a card reader to pay by either swiping or plugging the thing in.
Sheesh. People have such short memories these days...
Seriously though. Contactless payment involves an additional set of exchanges with the payment provider over and above chip 'n pin or swipe 'n sig. Losing the ability to process contactless often doesn't affect the other options.
Careful with the sarcasm there! One benefit to contactless (when it works) is quicker transaction time so quicker customer through-put, useful in a pandemic. I'd never used contactless before and find it fails about 10% of the time forcing me to enter the card and pin. I suspect that's because it's not my card and they suspect me!
"I'd never used contactless before and find it fails about 10% of the time forcing me to enter the card and pin. I suspect that's because it's not my card and they suspect me!"
IIRC, the standard usage is 10 contactless transaction then on the 11th the machine will ask you to insert it, read the chip and ask for your PIN. It a fraud reduction tactic so if you lose your card or have it stolen, it limits how much can be taken before it becomes useless or is otherwise blocked. The raising of the transaction limit and the possible 10 goes a thief gets means they can now steal up to £400, which is no small amount to most people.
It can be used on most card readers, though the store would probably rather you didn't. Many payment providers (including the likes of Paypal and Stripe) charge a premium for payments processed using the magnetic strip (or by manually typing in the card number) because of the increased risk of fraud.
yesterday .... jeez the no waving of a card.... the horror of having to put the card in the machine and type my PIN on an ikky keyboard (paise whatever for the foresight of rubber gloves )
oh well... back to cash it is... wont be long before we're exchanging rocks again
Wheres the 'end of civilisation" icon?
I always take a wet anti-bacterial wipe in with me simply because if I do have to touch anything I don't have to worry about using hand gel all the time, other than when I go in and when I leave. After all, I'm touching other stuff too, like the shopping bag handles, pockets, wallet, card etc. Also, the anti-bac wipe, at one layer thick, lets you use the touch screens on a self service till and not have to touch the buttons on the keypad when that has to happen. I'm also, by default, cleaning the keys for the next person who may not have had that foresight.
I always take a wet anti-bacterial wipe in with me simply because if I do have to touch anything I don't have to worry about using hand gel all the time, other than when I go in and when I leave. After all, I'm touching other stuff too, like the shopping bag handles, pockets, wallet, card etc. Also, the anti-bac wipe, at one layer thick, lets you use the touch screens on a self service till and not have to touch the buttons on the keypad when that has to happen. I'm also, by default, cleaning the keys for the next person who may not have had that foresight.
Given that SARS-CoV-2 is a virus, anti-bacterial wipes may not be giving you the protection you think.
SARS-CoV-2 is an enveloped virus, and it is not clear that, for example, that Quaternary Ammonium compounds such as benzalkonium chloride (BAC) are effective at reducing viral loads on surfaces.
American Chemical Society: Are Quaternary Ammonium Compounds, the Workhorse Disinfectants, Effective against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2? doi: 10.1021/acsinfecdis.0c00265
Make sure your hand and/or surface disinfectant is effective against SARS-CoV-2 - not all disinfectants are.
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So anyone hoping to Apple-pay their way would be pretty de-gruntled by this.
Lovely, just what you need the week before pay day - smug tits with their £1000 phones that aren't thin enough to shove up a card machine.
Best uncle albert /corporal jones voice ... "..... y'know, delboy/mr mannering ,I remember during the war, we were putting our all into fighting the covid1984 and ya cudntt get nuffing on click .... oh it was terrubble"
"not like tday - you don't know yore born laddy"
I always have one contactless, one chip & pin (with a bank in different group) and cash.
The only time I ever had a problem was when a country pub lost all card access and lunch for two cost much more than I expected. Fortunately the staff knew me, so were OK with a delayed payment.
Contactless limit could rise to £100
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said it will consult "shortly" on a change in the rules.
"It is important that payments regulation keeps pace with consumer and merchant expectations," the regulator said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55826118
It's either Covid or who knows - getting ready for rising cost of living?
Oh, and time to wrap the cards in tin-foil, if not already
I have to admit that over the last 10 months, I have sometimes considered getting a contactless card (of the pre-load it and it can't spend more than that sort). But then when they raised the limit, and you say they are considering doing so again ... I think I'll carry on holding out.
Actually, the main reason I had considered getting a pre-paid contactless card is that at work they've made it so you cannot get a hot drink in the canteen without a contactless card. They had complaints that people couldn't get a drink outside their limited serving hours so added card readers - but only contactless card readers. But since I've not been onsite for 10 months now, that particular problem is on hold.
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