Dear LPG,
 

I read the article that DC wrote about how possible it is to pay for something twice when you touch your contactless payment card.  

I just want to say that when I got that letter from my bank offering me a state of the art contactless debit card, I really did not want it and in the end they sent me an old fashioned one.   It did take a while and a few attempts to get it sorted and in the knowledge that the average debit card’s expiration happens about every three years, it will not be long before I need to do it all again.

I know that most of the people in this world feel that not needing to make contact with a payment reader saves time but I am old school and prefer to use that pin number that I was given.    I have no doubt that it will not be long before we are all forced to touch but I will continue to put my PIN number in for anything I want to pay for for as long as I can.   

The establishment plays on the fact that everything needs to be quicker these days and those who are trying to balance working, and raising a young family accept that time, and not wasting the extra seconds it takes to enter that number, makes the touch and pay society acceptable.  The banks say that they are safe and we are blinded by the scientific explanations that those who are supposed to know about all this stuff offer, but perhaps pensioners are societies age group who have a bit more time to think this through.  

We have only really had this system for about four years and I can’t help but think that it is worrying how quickly we have all become happy to accept the convenience of not needing to remember our PIN numbers.  

If you have to have one, can I remind you about the protective sleeves that will stop them being activated even if you put your purse or wallet too close to a prepped payment machine.  

My wish is that we can hang onto our old fashioned chip and pin cards, that only work with a PIN number, and that they remain an option for us for a long time to come, and I have found a few bits of online advice about how to protect the contactless ones and hope that, if nothing else, those that have a contactless payment card of any description, take another look at this information.

It seems to me that we have spent the past two years being acutely aware of the risk of getting too close to each other for fear of the spread of a certain transferable health infection, while financially, the closer our payment cards get the more likely we are to be at risk of unintentional or intentional financial infection. 

DS, Kent.

DS offers some related information…

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