Forgotten your PIN? Soon it may not be an issue

I use Apple Pay wherever possible. It avoids the need to take my wallet out of my my iPhone is often already in my hand for another reason anyway. Unlike a physical contactless card, Apple Pay has no transaction limit because it is authenticated by two-factor authentication (something you have and something you are) like chip & PIN (something you have and something you know). The missing piece in the jigsaw is delivering receipts electronically to make the whole process paperless.

It is disappointing that some retailers still don’t support contactless payments at all. Even a brand new branch of Sainsbury’s near me doesn’t support it. With no transaction limit for some contactless payment methods, all retailers really should support contactless by now.

I like contact-less and use it where ever I can though its a good thing at this early stage the amount is small and limited, I do not doubt it will grow. Mine is with HSBC, think the next stage it will be on the mobile like what Apple have introduced and are doing at present.

I have four PIN’s in varying degrees of regular use and sometimes I have a mental block. This is critical when you have to use the same credit card as you used to make a booking in order to receive the service [in some hotels for example]. I do have a safety net method of recovering a forgotten PIN from my memory but I won’t describe it. Anything that involves cards or iPhones is a nuisance because they can so easily be left at home, lost or stolen and then you really are stuck up a gum tree. So the idea of a wristband appeals to me, until I think – would I need four of them? Presumably a way could be found to ‘authorise’ the wristband to interact with one’s selected accounts and, at the point of payment, to pre-select the account to be charged before offering the wristband to the scanner. This could also help with store cards which are account cards rather than credit cards, although I suspect they are on the way out anyway. I can see why the banks might want to develop systems that lock their customers in to using just one account for everything but I think we should guard against that and seek multi-versatility [which is tautologous but sounds nice].

Predictably, my answer is no thank you and that, of course, makes me an old fashioned person, behind the times and the latest trends. So be it. It is through choice and not incapability. I would be very fearful of any phone app that let me spend an unlimited amount using a telephone. I have no doubt that others would be trying to find ways of spending that for me and any security lapse could drain my bank account. I also don’t need a card to buy a newspaper, though I would have one to use on London Transport as this seems to be the only way to get around the capital these days.
Technology moves on and things like computer boot up times and internet access will soon be instant using future chipless technology. Payment methods will evolve and, sadly, money may become a thing of past generations. It shouldn’t become too easy to purchase things. There should always be a barrier that makes one consider whether a purchase is necessary before parting with wealth, in what ever form it comes in. Wealth will always be finite and folk will always be able to get into debt. We are going to see many examples of card and chip based payments in the next few years as people try out new ideas. Some will catch on, others will fail, and, as said earlier, there will always be people willing to find ways of criminally exploiting loopholes in security. If I were a few years younger I would think more about these things, however I do believe that good, old-fashioned money will keep me going until I spend no more.