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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

Yeah although I was just in Europe and it seems like pretty much everyone just taps a card [ADDED: This is probably an overstatement but lots seem to use a card.] rather than using their phone from what I saw. For most circumstances, even with an Apple Watch, it seems way easier in most circumstances to just tap a card than fumbling with electronics.

Even compared to a few years ago, contactless payments seemed way more prevalent and frictionless. In Amsterdam, on the advice of a local, I did buy a chip card for transit as systems are still in the process of switching but my understanding is various transit systems there and elsewhere increasingly let you just tap a contactless credit card.

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In London I would say majority use their phone. I switched around a year ago as well, it just means that I don't have to carry a wallet with me any more, took me a while to get confident in it but now I am. Going through the tube almost always works and the rare time that it doesn't you just try again and then it works.

I switched to carrying a small front pocket wallet (basically a business card holder) a while back. It lets me have some bills for the odd vendor (e.g. food cart) that doesn't want to take a card for a small purchase and a few other things like ID that I like to have on me. In general, like paper boarding passes when they're convenient to print out I just find it easier to use a physical artifact rather than fumbling with my phone or watch. But I'm happy to admit that may be largely habit. Certainly in circumstances where carrying anything in a pocket was inconvenient, I can see using a watch.

We just moved into a WeWork office in Shoreditch and I am genuinely very annoyed that I now have to carry a building entry pass in the form of a card. I've spent years trying to shed all my cards and now I'm back to having to carry a wallet.

I was in a WeWork the other day, and saw somebody tap their phone to get entry to the office. I was amazed, assuming they had rolled out some new system that used phones for access. Nope—she just had her access card stuck inside her phone case.

That really is annoying. Apple has APIs for adding door keys / office passes to the NFC wallet. WeWork could fix this if they wanted to.

I wonder if there’s a way to clone cards to digitize them (using 3rd party hardware readers and these APIs maybe?)

This is definitely possible with things like a Flipper Zero, but I doubt adding the cloned card to Apple Wallet is possible on iPhones (though I imagine Androids have no such restriction)

I see a mix of card tapping and phone tapping here. I myself only use my card when my phone is out of battery or when the amount to pay is larger than the bank allows by default (though I'm pretty sure you can raise that).

It was pretty weird seeing Apple users around me get excited about finally being able to pay with their phones when the first bank here started offering Apple Pay. I guess they never noticed that every other brand of smartphone had been doing that for give years at that point?

As for the public transit system, the stupid mess of checking in and out at varioustterminals still exists, but they are indeed working on using bank cards for public transit. They're of limited use though (no ability to store discounts and such) and not all transit companies accept them yet. I'm not sure what the situation is with credit cards, as the Netherlands is very much debit card oriented. The cards follow the same standards, but as any American trying to do groceries here will find out, that doesn't mean all cards will work on all terminals.

>the Netherlands is very much debit card oriented

I was told that and then I basically used nothing but my contactless credit card over the course of a week. But I was admittedly mostly in central Amsterdam and doing tourist stuff and restaurants.

Canada is the same I can't recall the last time I used cash or coins, perhaps two decades? It's tap debit or now more frequently my phone using Google Wallet.

This has changed quite substantially over the last five+ years. It certainly used to be the case that using certain cards that were very common in the rest of Europe (particularly credit cards, but also things like visa debit) required jumping through hoops in the Netherlands, and often weren't accepted.

A Dutch friend, who knows the industry a little, said that the Dutch banks had gone their own way with payment systems in the past. This heritage had taken some time to unwind. (I guess he was talking about things like Chipknip?)

Another Amsterdam local advised just getting a pay as you go chip card for public transit. He said that they were in the process of implementing just accepting contactless credit/debit cards directly but it was a bit hit or miss whether that was accepted in general.

For example, the largest supermarket chain (Albert Heijn) usually won't take credit cards, with the exception of certain cities and contexts (train stations) where there are more foreigners.

American credit cards work just fine with OV Pay for both NS and regional public transport (tried it with a Chase Visa card). Side note: Albert Heijn also finally started accepting them, so credit cards are now accepted at almsot all merchants.

When did AH start accepting anything besides NL debit? I have a US debit card that didn't work as recently as Nov 2022. It was a major pain in the ass taking cash out of the ATM right next to the checkout just to buy groceries for a month while I waited on approval for a Dutch bank account.

Silly me at the time didn't realize I could go next door to Jumbo and pay with whatever the hell I wanted... live and learn!

My limited anecdotal evidence from going to an AH in Amsterdam as a tourist just last week, the card terminal still had a sticker on it saying "No Visa/Mastercard". That said, did a quick Google and this Reddit post[0] (in Dutch) implies that perhaps even the terminals with that sticker accept debit/credit cards as of 4 months ago.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/geldzaken/comments/1085e6t/albert_h...

I believe it was around the beginning of 2023. Maestro has been deprecated and no further cards will be issued from July this year, so all merchants need to start accepting other card types (Mastercard/Visa Debit) by then at the latest.

Hopefully this will put an end to the common perception in NL that Mastercard/Visa == credit card. Most of them aren't!

Very recently, January this year it worked for the first time in an average neighborhood AH for me.

Funny note: Aldi accepts everything, even AMEX.

In London at least, few people use cards any more. People often still call phone payment card payment though - I guess people have mostly figured out it's the same underlying mechanism. Personally, I still carry a card in case my phone runs out of battery, but I keep it in the bottom of my backpack.

If only Android had a way to pay if the phone was out of battery I could dump the cards entirely.

Incredibly, my iPhone died while walking in NYC, but was still able to use the transit card at a gate. It goes into a low power mode that still has the payment/transit card powered.

Indeed. Android currently lacks that feature but without it I don't feel confident in going completely plastic free.

Perhaps at some point batteries will get so good that running out of battery just won't be a concern any more.

I use a physical card at the grocery store because it combines my Visa card and the store rewards card into one. If I tap it against the reader, it first reads the rewards card via NFC, and then reads the Visa card via NFC. If I used my phone, I'd first need to get the clerk to scan some kind of a barcode from my phone and then I could pay via Apple Pay.

Why wouldn't the same work with a phone via NFC as with a physical card via NFC? At least my phone (Android) presents the virtual rewards card (one app) first, then the virtual credit card (another app).

I don't think Apple Pay can present multiple NFC cards automatically in succession or at the same time. And the rewards card cannot even be added to the Wallet anyways, since the bank's app only adds the Visa Debit/Credit cards, and the store rewards app doesn't add anything at all.

I'm not sure if there's even an API to add store rewards cards as NFC cards, since all of my rewards cards in the Wallet are barcodes.

See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Wallet#Supported_loyalty...

> These programs are conveyed through NFC via Apple Wallet's VAS protocol. Programs that support One Tap are conveyed at the same time as a payment card stored in Apple Wallet.

Never knew about VAS. I guess I just need to lobby the store to implement the protocol then. Probably fat chance they'd actually implement it though.

You'd think it would be a no-brainer to improve the checkout process like this, but perhaps Apple's terms are unfavorable to the stores.

Anecdotally, VAS is great when it works. Seems to work reliably enough for me at Walgreens and Jimmy Johns as two examples. (Though I often forget it works at Walgreens because they heavily encourage the two-step procedure because the cashier likes to make sure you have the loyalty card for some reason before finalizing the total, even when no savings would have been involved.)

Could you explain a bit about this? I’ve never seen a card acting double purpose like this and I’d love to read about it. Does your credit card have some sort of rewards program for the store, or is it a store card? Or how does this work exactly?

It's not a store card, it's a fairly regular Visa Credit/Debit card from my bank (Osuuspankki) that has the loyalty card for K Group's stores integrated into it. When you order a new payment card, you can add your loyalty card number in the application and they'll integrate it in your card.

https://www.op.fi/private-customers/daily-banking/cards/card...

Other banks in Finland also offer the same loyalty card integration with their payment cards.

No idea how it works technically. I assume that it broadcasts the loyalty card and the debit card at the same time when you use NFC, since you can get both with one (long) tap against the payment terminal. It also reads the loyalty card if you use chip + PIN to pay. The loyalty card is completely separate from the actual payment card - if I use Apple Pay to pay with the same underlying Visa card, it will not give me any loyalty rewards.

Something similar applies to Costco gas pumps: if you have a Costco Visa you can tap it once and it will both validate your membership (which is required to use the pump) and bill the charge to the card. Apple Pay doesn’t work because the membership isn’t associated with it.

The PIN chip on my card stopped working months ago. Normally I’d have to get a new one and change my card details everywhere (hassle hassle) but I haven’t bothered as I can use Apple Pay for everything

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