Originally Posted by
diburning
Chase sent me a new contactless Freedom the other day, and after activating it, I've been using it in different places around work. This is my first contactless card, (I find it handy to just use Apple Pay all the time), and I noticed a few things.
1. At an MX915 pin pad, I can't get the contactless to work until I actually touch the card to the screen. With my phone (and it's thick case) I can get Apple Pay to work about half an inch away from the screen. Does this difference exist because the phone is actively emitting a signal, whereas the card is passive? My card isn't exactly contactless if I have to tap it against the screen to work.
2. At a vending machine at work, I've noticed that the orientation of which I hold my card matters as to whether the reader will read my card or not. If I tap it willy nilly, or tap the center of the card, or try tapping the chip end of the card, it will say "Read error" but if I tap the opposite end of the card where the contactless symbol is located, it reads it just fine every time. Could it just be my card, or is that simply how the antenna in the card works?
I've really only noticed metal cards needing particular placement (logo facing the terminal), but I haven't paid much attention otherwise. I think it should be possible to tap farther away from the display too but I ended up getting into the habit of just putting the card on it. Will have to experiment further.
Originally Posted by
ecs0013
Do you remember if that was for a particular bank? If Chase were to roll that out, it would be great for me—lots of Chase ATMs around here.
All three major ones with contactless readers, unfortunately (WF, BofA, Chase). Capital One and a few local credit unions also seem to have readers on their ATMs but they're not enabled at all.
Originally Posted by
Rufferto
Using your TD debit card do you ever get prompted for PIN or is it always signature? I'm curious if the online PIN preference on that card really provides any benefit when traveling.
That's assuming that the card prefers PIN on contactless as well as when inserted. It's very possible that it doesn't, hence the behavior observed thus far.
On that note, I'm not sure any US card will ever actually prefer PIN on contactless considering that in a lot of stores, the contactless limit is effectively $0 (thanks to Quick Chip making the transaction amount unknown at the time of insert/tap, thus making any CVM waivers unusable; in addition, preferring signature is equivalent to preferring no CVM due to signature no longer being required for transactions).