- Those tap targets on CC readers sometimes aren't where the antenna is, and you have to rub your card all over the reader to get it to work?
- Chip transactions take way longer than tap transactions, like 10 seconds? Why?
Fraud clearly hasn't had a deleterious effect on the entire system, and the penalties for fraud align incentives to fight fraud properly. It's not such a large problem that I'm willing to take steps backwards in terms of functionality and privacy to digitize my purchasing.
Powered devices like a phone have read/write NFC chips that the device will write data to on demand, usually waiting for some form of user auth to make it secure, e.g. an iPhone keeps the NFC chip empty until you specifically request to pay for something, at which point it authenticates you (e.g. with FaceID) and then writes the data to the chip which can then be read by the terminal to authorize payment. Once payment has been made it wipes the NFC chip again.
But a device can have some payment info written to the NFC chip at all times, which is what iPhones do when you have the "Express Transit Card" option enabled – with certain authorized vendors, that payment data stays on your phones NFC chip indefinitely, so you don't need to auth with FaceID and even when the phone is out of battery it can still be read by those authorized terminals.
And mobile phone providers over here don't guarantee even two nines of reliability, never mind that even 3½ days of no service per year is already too much for some critical things, like being able to get at your money.
And the local public transport association for example tries to disclaim any responsibility for any sort of problems if you're using their mobile ticketing app – if it doesn't work, though luck, your problem, buy a new ticket or pay a fine. Even if you've bought a monthly season ticket there are no special provisions, and the rules don't even differentiate between technical issues caused by myself [1], those caused by third parties (like the mobile service provider) or those caused by the public transport provider respectively its app developers themselves.
[1] Although while I can take care to keep it sufficiently charged, not letting it fall to the ground or whatever, I still can't prevent it from just randomly dying anyway, or the manufacturer issuing some borked update or whatever
I now need a phone that I keep charged, up to date, with cellular connectivity, and logged into some tech behemoth in order to pay for goods?
plus on the bus or train I usually use a book or my kindle so it's easy to forget the phone
I have no issues with the icon for tap. Although they do seem to rub off and I wonder if they are meant to have an accessible braille pattern.
My dislike is tapping the screen, because then you block the visual feedback mechanism that lets you know whether it worked.
I have OP’s problem too. When there’s an icon it’s easy, but some terminals (older ones?) don’t have the icon anywhere but support the functionality so you just have to sort of try to figure out where it is.
It can also be a problem on small terminals. The bigger ones have plenty of room, but sometimes the small ones put it awkwardly on the back where you would never look for it.
This gets me every time
I actually find the "Square" based nfc readers to be the best. There's no real feedback because it's just a tiny, watch sized brick that you pass your card anywhere in the vicinity of and it reads it so fast you basically can't screw it up.
You could also do something like set the PIN for a given card to the security code backwards or to the last two digits of the account number concatenated with the first two digits of the security code.
Either of those should be fine under the threat models applicable to most HN readers.