Ugh. I absolutely love Metro bank, but this is the one time they've let me down, no idea when they will get on board. Really looking forward to using ApplePay. Might open a second bank account just so I can…
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Apple Pay Confirmed to Have £20 Limit Per Transaction in UK
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Why are people saying this is clickbait? It's not like merchants update their terminals every day. Most merchants that already accept contactless will very likely be susceptible to the £20 limit. What they meant by updated terminals is places that haven't had it yet, like the Apple Store. I'm sure they want people to use Apple Pay in their own stores and it would be silly to have that limit.
"I'd like to buy a Macbook"
"Sure, tap here 55 times and you're good to go."
"I'd like to buy a Macbook"
"Sure, tap here 55 times and you're good to go."
Walmart & Co are bringing their own 'innovation' payment method to the table. I can only imagine the failure it will experience. I can't see their issue with accepting the payment method, or contactless in general.
CEO so out of touch I guess..
I just use the Apple Store app to pay for off-the shelf purchases - it might not suit everyone but if you want to avoid queuing and any physical card transaction (as well as scaring your family who think you're shoplifting) then it's still going to beat ApplePay
It tells merchants all they need to know - that they've got to support the latest standards which are set by the PCI, not Apple. Apple wouldn't be able to provide any help/support to Merchants on this, so it wouldn't be right of them to provide specific technical details IMHO - merchants will already know who they'll need to contact regarding their card processing infrastructure
As others have noted, the per-purchase limit comes from wanting to limit the damage if someone steals a contactless card.
For the same reason, a user can get challenged for a PIN if they use their contactless card too many times in a row, or if it's been a while since they used the card. The system wants to make sure the real owner is still behind the purchases.
A similar low limit is used in the US before a signature is required, although of course that's only to prevent store liability, since without a PIN to confirm ownership, signatures alone don't prevent a stolen card from being used.
Correct. To POS terminals, mobile NFC payments like Apple Pay/Google Wallet/Softcard are just another contactless card.
Limit changes at the terminal have nothing to do with being a merchant being an Apple partner (which is usually more about using Apple Pay in their corporate app).
It's only about having support for on-device CVMs (Cardholder Verification Methods) such as fingerprint / eye / voice authentication, or onboard PIN / passcode entry.
(The terminal has no idea what particular method is used; only that it was done on-device.)
See above. The article specifically pointed out the requirement for supporting on-device CVMs. A merchant has to talk to their card processor to find that out.
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Walmart and Walmart owned stores are all ran by the same Home Office in Arkansas.
They run on the same IBM4690 servers as U.S. stores which explains them disabling contactless.
They may introduce CurrentC to the UK INSTEAD! LOL! LOL!
To make matters worse for Walmart, UK stores are controlled like US stores, as in even the temperature and music is controlled by Home Office in Arkansas.
Also, when I worked at Walmart, I could check and even change Walmart China and Asda UK store's inventory and mess with it all the time through the store's SMART system.
Every store in the world with Walmart is connected through this satellite linked SMART system so Arkansas can control it from their offices here in the U.S.
Also when Walmart took over ASDA, is when Walmart literally turned it into Walmart. Next time you're in there take a look at the handheld scanners that employees use etc, they say Walmart right on them.
Pay weeks are called Walmart Weeks, etc just like Walmart and SAMs here.
Before I had a contactless debit card I was really looking forward to Apple Pay! Now I've got one I'm not really fussed, what will this do that my debit card can't already do? It might be useful if I've forgotten or lost my card but the small amount of stores that support this make it mostly useless. I've still got to get something out my pocket, be it my phone, a card or a gun to finish the transaction.
I mean when it comes to using the London Underground I'd rather slam a cheap, replaceable debit card against the scanner than a £700 phone!
I mean when it comes to using the London Underground I'd rather slam a cheap, replaceable debit card against the scanner than a £700 phone!
I remember during the keynote they showed some retailers that will partner with Apple. I understand from this that the likes of M&S, Boots, Waitrose, etc will accept more than £20 transactions. The rest, will use the standard contactless configuration.
BP were one of those retailers, but they will have the £20 limit at launch and probably be limited all the way out beyond the increase to £30 in October.
I'm sure I've read from November 2015 Boots will be limitless for Apple Pay.
Given Walgreens own part of the business (I'm not sure of the percentage) this kinda makes sense.
Given Walgreens own part of the business (I'm not sure of the percentage) this kinda makes sense.
Yes that's correct about Boots being limitless from November.
Boots is a subsidiary of Walgreens Boots Alliance since January when Walgreens purchased the remaining 55% of Alliance Boots they didn't own.
Has Boots started paying taxes or are they still dodgey dealing to not pay? i.e. can I start shopping in there again or shall I continue my boycott?
In Australia, we have a $100 limit on all our contactless payments. Over that we can still tap to pay but it asks for our pin up to any amount. I reckon that's a good way of doing it. Also if our card gets stolen, the bank will cover us for whatever is spent contactless as long as we report it stolen within 24 hours which is great!
Again, it has nothing technically to do with partnering with Apple, since Apple has no control over the various CVM standards, that the upstream systems for each merchant can support. Apple's only part in this is to pass the on-device verification flag to the card issuer specific Java applets in the NFC Secure Element.
So as the article noted, it actually depends on merchants updating terminals and partnering with processors & banks to allow the latest card issuer on-device-user-verification flags to work.
Any merchant can do that, whether they're "partners" or not. Just like with the NFC payments themselves, the on-device flags are not specific to Apple Pay. However, Apple Pay is one of the first to use them.
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I'm inclined to agree with you re the benefits vs regular contactless. Now that I'm familiar with regular UK contactless I can only think of one Apple Pay benefit until the £20 limit is lifted. The one benefit that I can think of is that I don't like how long contactless payments take to appear on my online credit card transaction listing so the fact that the Apple Pay passcard stores details of the most recent contactless transaction on the phone saves me having to ask the cashier to print out a receipt each time.
As for "small amount of stores that support this" I assume you're talking about Apple Pay rather than contactless in general. I find that contactless is almost everywhere in the UK now. I agree that Apple's slide at the launch only had a relatively few stores listed but I'm not sure what that listing signified since any contactless terminal can take Apple pay as a regular contactless cardholder-not-verified (no CDCVM) transaction. Maybe the companies listed on the slide were the the big ones that had committed to reconfigure their terminals to support Apple Pay CDCVM verification method so potentially could impose > £20 transaction limits.
Now London Underground is another matter because I'm confused about how they could realistically implement ApplePay CDCVM on their system. The issue that I worry about with London Underground (or more accurately Transport for London - TfL) is speed. As I understand it the full CDCVM verified method of doing an ApplePay transaction involves contacting the servers for authorisation whereas a regular contactless payment doesn't so presumably there is some extra delay on doing an authorised transaction. TfL actually held off for quite a while before introducing contactless on the tube because they were concerned that the reading speed was something like 100mS outside their target time limit. Even so, when they did introduce it I find paying on my contactless card (which is what I do all the time now) to be very noticeably slower than my old Oyster card and even the extra 100mS or so really does significantly change the way I interact with the ticket barriers. With my old Oyster card I could keep on walking albeit slightly more slowly as I touched my card to the reader and by the time I got to the barrier it would be open. With my contactless credit card I can't do that any more and have to stop for a split second before the barrier opens. If Apple Pay were to be even slower I can imagine that it might cause real issues during rush hour.
TfL probably are some of the world's most experienced people on these systems though, outside of East Asian countries, so I suspect they are ahead of this issue. All their stuff is probably under the £20 limit when used as PAYG on the ticket barriers so maybe CDCVM will only be used on the ticket machines/offices to buy expensive season tickets with the ticket barriers only doing regular unauthorised reads. Even if this is the way they go I still worry a bit about people having to have their thumb on the reader while placing the phone on the reader and issues with taking time to do the read, dropped phones etc. Every single millisecond is critical when it comes to read speeds at rush hour. I suppose there probably is a self-limiting factor here. If commuters have bad experiences using Apple Pay, and the bad experiences would be bad because as well as their own frustration they'd also get a lot of negative reactions from the people behind them who they were holding up, then they can always go back to Oyster or regular contactless card but the facility to use Apple Pay is still there for off peak travellers to use.
Supermarkets haven't completely jumped on contactless yet. Around my way, my local Tesco's and Co-op don't support it. Neither do the smaller cornershops, garages, etc. Highstreet stores are more likely to have it. The only shop to have it around my way is a Mcdonalds and a Co-op Pharmacy, not even the Co-op supermarket has it!
I do love the tech though. I think the £20 limit is okay, it just speeds up smaller purchases.
I was in a Morrisons that had it the other day which was a nice surprise... although the improved self-service checkout speed was mitigated somewhat by the need to wait for an attendant to glance at me and confirm I was clearly old enough to buy a bottle of wine... NFC/Passbook driver's licences next anyone?