I’m the opposite – I’m more likely to have my wallet than my phone on me so the card is more convenient.

Also I can see banks starting to charge per transaction when it’s through your phone as well.

What makes it more secure? apart from the fact you can turn it off and have to unlock the phone to use it.

It is not really convenient then is it? Not that I use my debit card that often, but when I do, stick it in the reader and type my number, less than a minute, the problem is the amount of time it takes for the system to recognise the card and for the data to go back and forward and that will be the same for NFC.

There was talk about a NFc having a button that must be pressed for it to be used, not that is a better idea.

I sometimes like to leave my card at home, that way I can't spend a lot, I do carry a bit of cash with me. If the NFC was on my phone, that mean I could never leave it at home unless I leave the phone at home.


If I was forced to have aNFC card, I would leave it at home more often, take out the cash I want and go fully cash based, apart from when I buy stuff mail order.

As I said in #8, you can configure it to beep and/or vibrate whenever a transaction is made. So you will know immediately if a scammer steals from you. The mere possibility of this will make scammers reluctant to steal from phones. They are more likely to target cards instead.


The NFC protocol doesn't require network traffic.It's not like a normal card where the card merely identifies itself to the system, and the money is stored elsewhere. The NFC protocol can store credit actually within the chip, update it with each transaction, and reconcile it later.

It also stores details of each transaction, so if/when a scammer is found, all the unauthorised transactions can be reversed. It is in many ways more secure than cash.


Ah. Well, a major goal of this system is to make it more convenient for you to spend, so that you will spend more. It's not designed to help people who want to spend less.

That said, I dare say someone could write an app to limit access to the phone's credit temporarily. For an evening, perhaps; or it could test you to check that you are not drunk when you are trying to spend it. It could even be location-based, so you could spend money at the bus station but not in a strip club. (Examples for illustration only. I am not suggesting you personally get drunk and go to strip clubs, or travel by bus for that matter. I'm don't even know if strippers are planning to collect tips via RFID.)

Where would you swipe it?

It's contactless, so it would fit with their no-touch policy.

Not if it is as quiet as my phone you won't

The mere possibility of this will make scammers reluctant to steal from phones. They are more likely to target cards instead.

But cards are normally in your wallets untill you want to use them which is normally in a shop, a phone is on show outside.


Can, but it don't mean it will.


As long as you realise it is missing before they start spending your money. you can't prove that you have not been in a certain shop at a certain time.



True, a way for banks and shops to make even more money, mainly banks i think.

If you go into say Nero, and use a card it will cost Nero more than if you used Cash and that extra cost for Nero goes to the bank. so prices will go up so Nero can cover it.


i know what you mean, but it is just so much hassle, cash is so much easier.

It is ok if I stay with cash, i know some people think it is a crime, but not yet it is not.

Cash will be with us for many years, after my time I think

Not necessarily. The banks will take a fee per transaction, true, but, particularly for large businesses it works out less than the cost of handling cash (time employees spend handling, counting, banking it; and when banked, fees are payable anyway)

It will; it's the major purpose of them.

(Occasionally they will want to phone home for an extra security check.)


I'm talking about stealing from the phone, not stealing the phone.

Maybe for a while, only because the banks want the retailers to use this NFC system. If cash died out or more people started to use NFC, the banks would soon increase the cost. They are banks after all.

It sounds so simple until it goes wrong. even the normal card transactions have problems now and again.

don't matter do it? If they steal the phone they got access to it and no doubt someone will come up with a way of reading the chip and any data on it .

As i said, i will stick with cash.

Far more people use credit and debit cards now, and they're still cheaper to process for retailers than cash.

If they are cheaper then why do some shops charge you if you spend less than usually a fiver?

For small, owner-run, shops card fees can be higher. They don't have the volume to get a decent rate and their cash processing costs are minimal, they can just pocket the cash at the end of the day.
Plus they have not actually worked out the costs of processing cash. They ignore the staff cost to check cash at the till, count cash at the end of day cashing up, counting the cash for banking, taking to the bank or paying Securitas to collect it etc. Plus the fees their bank charges to take cash, because now they have to count it etc. They think cash is cheaper because they fail to realise their staff could be freed up to do other work if they didn't have to spend all that time processing cash.

For any reasonable sized business credit cars are cheaper to process than cash and they know how much staff wages are being spent on cash handling.

Because with debit cards (unlike credit cards) it usually costs 75p per transaction, rather than a percentage. This is for small and medium businesses. So if you buy anything less than £5 that's a large amount of the profit gone.

Credit cards are a % fee so the amount depends on the size of the transaction, fees are usually around 3%, but for some cards it's up to 5% - Amex.

It will be fun to look back on these threads a couple of years down the line......It's a bit like listening to some OAP's that won't use internet banking, because it means all your money will be stolen.
It is of course not mandatory to use NFC (although in the cashless future it may well be) so, I fail to see why so many get wound up by the subject. Once the NFC enabled sims or stickers are rolled out, all phones will become capable of NFC payments. Maybe that will be the trigger point for it becoming the norm rather than the oddity....

well...barclaycard already are doing...unfortunately barclays themselves are more resistant. I wonder if it easier to match it to a credit card rather than a bank account...

http://www.barclaycard.co.uk/personal/paytag

Things take alot longer than you would imagine. I'm still waiting for the paperless office I was promised 25 years ago.

I've never seen the point of NFC payments on a phone. Seems to be another thing to add to the 'all eggs in one basket' scenario, and adds to the over reliance on the phone.

Personally I'm happy to have NFC cards in my wallet and keep my phone separate. I can see them trying to push the NFC on the phone as an alternative to us to carry wallets around?

There's a fatal flaw - smartphone battery life is bad enough as it is, with many phones lasting less than a day, if you use the features. If you ditched your wallet, you'd be stranded as the battery would be dead. I can fast see that scenario happening.

I would agree. It will be a very long time before we give up our wallets and a card takes up no space. I think NFC on phones is a function waiting for an application.

What if you don't have a mobile phone

What are "location-based switching" and "tags"?

"Paypal Debit Card?" Do you mean a prepay one? I thought they got rid of them? I used to have one and it became obsolete.

Watch out for the copyright lawsuits.

As I understand it, the banks' motive in introducing chip-and-pin was the opposite of ensuring security for customers. Under the signature system it was relatively easy to prove that your signature had been forged. However if your pin number is used in a fraudulent transaction it's not so easy to prove that you weren't negligent and therefore liable for any loss.

I don't think that 's true where the correct PIN is used, if the fraudulent transaction is carried out before the bank has been notified of the card being lost. I've heard of cases where the bank insist that you must have been careless in divulging the PIN and refused to pay - there was an investigative documentary on it a couple of years back.