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Comment by oakesm9 | Hacker News Reader

The UK has a limit of £100 for contactless cards, with a requirement to insert and enter your PIN after a few successive taps. Apple Pay and Google pay technically don’t have the PIN requirement as they’re authenticated and technically don’t have a limit, but in practice most shops still have a £100 limit.

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It depends on the POS configuration/support of CDCVM (Consumer Device Cardholder Verification Method). If it doesn't support it, Apple Pay/Google Pay is just a regular EMV contactless card from the POS's perspective, so the regular limits apply.

On some POSes, you can get a hint of when the POS either doesn't understand CDCVM or isn't configured to verify it when you tap with Apple Pay/Google Wallet and you get back a "Cardholder Device Not Verified" on the receipt.

Obviously ultimately, even with CDCVM support, it's up to how things are configured, but in the UK at least, every single POS I've seen that returns "Cardholder Device Verified" will let transactions through the same way as if you did Chip+PIN.

> but in practice most shops still have a £100 limit.

I've not found this to be the case anymore, sometimes the terminal will display a limit or the merchant will believe the limit applies to phones, but no limit is technically enforced.

In my experience few merchants limit Apple Pay to the contactless limit (Tesco being a notable exception) but many of the times I’ve used Apple Pay for larger purchases the person helping me has been surprised that it worked.

I once paid for a car with Apple Pay (it was far over the £100 limit)

> with a requirement to insert and enter your PIN after a few successive taps

Specifically, I believe this was due to Strong Customer Authentication laws in the EU: https://www.visa.co.uk/partner-with-us/payment-technology/st...

> but in practice most shops still have a £100 limit

Not true, although shop keepers will often say it won't work, right up until I tap and it works

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