New World

I have an instant pay system, it's called cash.

@darkblade The problem with cash is that you periodically have to go get more from the ATM. If you mainly pay with a card you rarely have to go to an ATM.

@Orocou My cash is handed to me, and then on hand till more cash is given. So no ATM visits for me. Give cash to account for internet, phone, and tv, and that's about it. Cash for all the other things, need internet money.. buy a prepaid code which I won't advertise for them.

@Spiclypeus the sort that gets me what I can afford when I want it, it's a great way to live.. if you don't get robbed. If you do.. well better luck next time.

@darkblade I didn't consider that someone could get paid their salary/wages in cash. Completely foreign idea here in Finland. If it works for you, then no problem.

@darkblade WHAT KIND OF WITCHCRAFT IS THIS ?

I worked in a grocery store in Finland once and I had a not-so-sober man try to pay for his stuff with a library card ffs

'@kamu' did it work?



:)

@kamu I'm surprised that you even recall the event. I thought such a thing was a pretty common day in Finland? :P

Call my a cynic, but I don't think a system that allows money to be extracted from your bank account without even a token bit of security is a good idea.

@stewy497 I agree...
Same thing with nessecary pincodes and I'm fine.

Huh, I 'd like to have a setting I could change on the web page of my bank after logging in that I wanted to make it impossible with my pass to pay without pincode. Ever. Insta pay or not.
Currently, the only option is filling in forms to get a replacement pass that's not insta pay compatible, or a shielded cover.

@Wortel
Same, but I'm sadly not motivated enough to go through all the struggle, plus, I live in a pretty rural part so instant payment il all but nonexistent and I don't really think about it.
Still, I don't like the idea that anybody could use my card without needing any code or anything else.

@ZeDestructor yeah I fully agree

@Wortel

I have that in my internet bank, though I'm not sure if all banks in Finland have it. I can change what amount can be paid with swiping my card, how much is the upper limit for paying with it in stores in a day, how much cash can be lifted in a day and the limit for internet payments with the card (nationally most internet payments can be done directly through the web bank, so I usually only use the card when shopping internationally). The change is instant, so if I for some reason need to use more money some day it's just to log on and fix it (normally I have internet payment at 0 and only change it when I need it).

Of course it is still possible to pick up the card information even if there are limits on spending, so someone tech savvy enough could probably hack it easily enough. Then again, someone quick fingered enough could lift ones cash. No system is fool proof, and a society's ethical codes and ability to give people chances to live life as they want has more effect on crime prevention than security and punishment.

@Sofs I found all those settings except for the swiping payment maxes, but I did see them for internet payment and drawing cash.

And they aren't fully instant, but take two days to start working or so.

True, no system is fool proof, but if it isn't too hard to earn a living, you probably won't find to many thieves.

@stewy497 It's actually pretty hard to pull off. The reader contacts your bank and gives the company's ID before the transaction is complete.

First you would need a hacked reader. That's the easy part.
Second you would need a fake company ID, which would make you hack Visa's (or whatever company you use), and the goverment's databases. Not so easy.
Third you would need an untraceable bank account (overseas transactions are not allowed without a pin) and that's almost impossible.
Fourth you can only use it to pay 25€ at a time and three payments in a short time will trigger a PIN prompt.

Copying a card with a fake ATM is actually easier. Brute force hacking the PIN is actually very easy after you have the copy. Takes some time, but if you have a computer laying around it will work eventually.

This is the Finnish version of debit cards anyway. I don't know how it works everywhere else.

On the other hand... shortly after moving from the UK to Silicon Valley I went to my first US sf con, where I went along to the panel on cutting edge technology where they were burbling about the new and exciting developments in mobile phone tech that would be coming Soon! and wasn't it great to be piloting this sort of tech and being amongst the first to get it because we are Silicon Valley and living in the future!

And I made myself very unpopular by sticking up my hand and saying in my very English accent "You mean you guys don't have that stuff here yet?"

@JulesJones

I love it.

I'm not particularly psyched for someone being able to run through payments without pin confirmation if my card got stolen. That, and as other people have said, in this age of snooping, the more entities I can avoid giving data to, the better.

@ace5762 Any amount higher than €20 (I think?) needs pin confirmation, so it's not AS bad as the comic makes it look, and as someone whose only purchases are generally below €10 I find waving my wallet at it way easier than "Crud where'd I put -- oh okay here it is, let me just insert that -- oh no all these people are wAITING FOR ME *promptly drops wallet in rush to put card back*"

That said, I'd like to see pin confirmation for all amounts just in case, but c'est la vie.

It's pretty uncommon in the US. We've only just gotten chip cards...but no pin, so it's not actually any safer...

@firerosearien That depends on your bank and/or the retailer. Wal-mart in particular decided it would be too difficult for customers to use a PIN and don't ask for one on any purchase under $50. Small banks and credit unions are pretty ticked off about this, as it causes problems with their anti-fraud algorithms. (They could have blocked many fraudulent purchases before they occurred.) When I buy something under $50 at Wal-mart, I don't have to use a PIN. Everywhere else my credit union requires one, no matter the amount. I can buy a bottle of water and have to use my PIN at the grocery store. I have no complaints, I'm happy at the additional security. But most of the major banks are waiting for a few years to start requiring PINs. Which is idiotic.

As argued in the show Adam Ruins Everything, new technology is not the end of the world, it's just a new way of doing what we've been doing for millenia. Also, Americans read more books than ever, so that's not going anywhere. All the hipsters and old people are doing is complaining about newer generations, which people have been doing for thousands of years. Literally, Sokrates claimed the written word would destroy modern learning, and another philosopher wrote about how the youth nowadays has become rash and disrespectful

What's a contactless credit card? What even is a credit card? I saw people with them in the hotel and sometimes in Ecuador and Australia, but apart from that then what is the purpose they do?................

You guys know I have little to no contact with the world, I see you on the SatW forums...

Aren't those touch pay cards really easy to clone and doesn't the lack of a PIN mean there's no security if it's stolen?
I think I'll keep the security my PIN offers and deal with the apparently massive inconvenience of inserting card

@KTUOS

And punching in the code - don't forget those three extra seconds of your life you wasted.
In a week you'd save up enough time on paying contactless over the old way to see another cat video on Youtube.
Progress!

@KTUOS Its complicated.

Unlike the older magnetic strip system, both chip-n-pin and "contactless" cards have a microchip in them that do some checking before handing over the data needed to finalize the transaction.

Yes there was some bruhaha about how easy it was to clone rfid (related tech) rags in stores (one hilarious example switched the tags on a bottle of wine and another product), but those are purely passive, more like a bar code or magnetic strip.

The contactless cards are a continuation of the chip-and-pin, where the card actually do some checking and work before approving or denying payment. Thus they do support pin codes, but banks etc have decided to program them with a lower limit on when to require them. So depending on your bank etc anything below a certain sum as a single payment do not require a pin.

@KTUOS At least in Finland you can only buy for 25€ and less without PIN. And the machine randomly asks you to put PIN anyway. I think that if you do repeated transactions with the card it needs a PIN.

And if you lose your card you kill it anyway, right? There won't be a lot of damage done.

At least it is a helluva lot more secure than those swipe cards...

@KTUOS My phone can read aid display the card number and expiry date from my contactless card within a second. The card info was recently stolen and abused, possibly contactlessly.

When my grandmother used the instant pay thing I emidiatly went:" but what if someone steals your credit card? Then they will be able to pay without the code." And she just went:" I don't think anybody would steal an old lady's credit card sweetheart."
I'm with England on this one. Technology is scary!