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Comment by nvarsj | Hacker News Reader

At least in the UK, contactless is limited to 20£ and probably has other limits as well I suspect.

£30 in the UK, and PIN is required 'occasionally'

https://www.barclays.co.uk/current-accounts/debit-cards/cont...

As mentioned by others, the limit was raised to £30 over 4 years ago. Although, there is SCA (Strong Customer Authentication) regulation in the pipeline. I received an alert from at least two providers last year, albeit it does not apply to Apple Pay or Google Pay. However, due to Brexit, it remains to seen, if the banks will continue to implement it, or maybe change it to fit a new framework or renege on this pledge entirely.

Every time you make payments totalling €150 (£127) since you last entered your PIN, the contactless transaction will be declined. And a payment will be declined every time you’ve made five contactless payments in a row.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/02/06/new-europe...

I wonder what that meansーーwill you get an actual rejection or some sort of ‘downgrade’ workflow where you’ll be prompted to swipe? Or will I just look like a broke dude semi-randomly?

Probably the same thing it does now randomly. The reader says "Please use chip and PIN" then you follow the chip and PIN flow which automatically unlocks your card.

It will tell the terminal to demand a PIN, just as if you had inserted the card. It happening regularly will make the flow non-weird, at least.

£30 currently. Though mobile payments don’t fall foul of this in theory, in practice some terminals are limited to £30 to match the card limit, which can be annoying when you want to pay by mobile (the most secure way).

> £30 currently. Though mobile payments don’t fall foul of this in theory

I believe Apple Pay supports payments >£30 but I use Android Pay and it has never allowed me to exceed £30. I understand that it is probably a limitation of the terminal in many cases but I have observed an Apple Pay transation exceed £30 and then been rejected by my Android Pay device on the same terminal in one case.

Think it's a limitation of the issuer. I use my Hong Kong contactless card all the time for transactions up to 100GBP (the HK$1000 limit set by my bank) and the terminals just accept it.

Not sure where you are or why you experience this - I've made £300+ payments on my phone for sure (car service) and I think I might have done one close to £1000 at one point.

I regularly do payments >£30 with Android Pay. I'm not even sure where the limit is. It is probably an issuer limit.

>in practice some terminals are limited to £30 to match the card limit

Mostly the fault of a cheap implementation from my understanding as they them don't have the data required to verify the CDCVM.

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