Having had my Visa Debit card blocked twice in as many weeks, I’m beginning to question if our current “Plastic” cards are fit for purpose. A somewhat long story follows with a question at the end:
About 2 weeks ago, Skinny decided not to honour my perfectly valid Visa card. I contacted my bank to find out why my card was being rejected. They let me know that some businesses won’t take payment on cards that are approaching expiry and Skinny, apparently, won’t take payment if the card expires in the following month. The card was due to expire in 8 weeks!
I find it ridiculous to reject payments that far from expiry! What would you do if you only had access to one credit card?
I switched cards on the account and in the process the Skinny interface initiated three transactions in quick succession, of which two should not have occurred. Another long story, but it took four hours (yes 4) to sort that out. These transactions triggered my bank to block the newly registered card and warned me via text message. Thankfully, a quick reply text was all that was needed to unblock the card.
My new card arrived a week or two later (they sent it out early) - all good once I used it to make a local purchase via EFTPOS. (This card had the same card number but different CVV)
A little over a week later, I receive a text message from my bank:
We’ve blocked your Visa Debit Card due to some suspicious transactions to Google YouTube Super. If this was you, please reply AUTHORISED. If not, please give us a call on #### or pop into your local branch
These were not my transactions, so a call was made. Apparently, the card number was/had been used on multiple (21) relatively small transactions in Australia. The bank’s only option was to cancel the card and re-issue me a new one. How these transactions were being validated without the CVV (unless they had ‘cracked’ it), I don’t know. These were Google transactions, so I would expect them to have been validated?
Luckily, I was due to travel to town - a little over two hours round trip! So I went into my closest branch and received a new card (with a new card number this time). Another EFTPOS transaction at a local shop and it’s good to go again.
I’ve no doubt there are others who have had similar experiences?
I can’t remember the last time I used cash, though I always carry some. For me, a cashless society mostly works.
The discussion I had with my bank suggests that these type of blocks, due to unauthorised transactions, are on the rise significantly.
So what is the future of “money”? How can transactions be made without inconvenience, but still be secure and safe from unauthorised access?
Really just a topic starter and I felt I needed to tell the story.
I see a lot of comments that a cashless society would not be a good one, but no reasons behind this.
Sure, current implementations and technology make it nonviable, but I cannot think of any reason why this could not change in the future.
Hypothetically, the government’s central bank could issue a crypto-based currency, backed by them, and equal exactly to the dollar. Let’s call it the Kiwicoin. This coin would work using an official wallet, and perhaps other 3rd party wallets. It could be used with a debit-card, like some places already have (crypto.com, wirex, etc). You could exchange fist into this, and back, 1:1 with no fees. Instant transactions, resilient network, complete record of transactions. There are many potential benefits.
This is only one option, I’m sure there are other ways of executing a cashless society. Cash has no intrinsic value, and other than being a physical object, has no benefit over the numbers in your bank, and several downsides.
I’m with you on this. None of the things people are worried about are inherently unsolvable, they just haven’t been solved yet.
Some shops are already cashless, and over time I expect this to grow. I don’t think the government will suddenly decide to stop making cash, but rather over the next few decades I think the number of shops not taking cash will increase until it becomes the majority. There will be a critical point where enough shops don’t take cash that people stop carrying cash, then the remaining shops taking cash will probably see a significant drop in the number of people using cash until no one bothers accepting it.
Also, I seem to recall a paper-based EFTPOS being used in the past when I’ve been to a supermarket when the EFTPOS network was down. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a supermarket with EFTPOS down though.
One simple solution may be to revert back to the old way of doing things. Not cash, but those zip zap credit card machines that shops used to have.
I called them ‘shick shack’ machines. 😂