Ordered a tea from the trolley, the server had a portable card machine with contactless. I only had my iPhone. After tapping, the card reader required me to insert my card, which I obviously couldn’t do, and neither could I use another card as I only have one card in Pay.
The server looked a bit blank, and didn’t really know what to do. He said again, “it’s telling you to insert your card” and I had to say to him, “how do you think I’m going to do that with a phone?”
In the end he gave it to me for free.
Is this a case of the card reader being incorrectly configured, or potentially trying to make an offline transaction? I thought Wallet Pay transactions were always authorised.
Any thoughts? Where’s @Rika when you need them? Ha!
I would just ask them to cancel the transaction and try again. It’s not Apple Pay asking; from what I understand it’s the issuing bank asking for the PIN?
It’s the same on planes, where they take payment but it isn’t charged until the data from the terminals is downloaded at the destination (on the ground) - they store the transactions locally due to lack of connection. I remember having to insert my card after using my phone with a contactless terminal on a flight to Greece, it must be a belt-and-braces procedure to ensure the actual card was presented when the purchase took place.
Thanks all. I’m surprised the machine can’t tell the difference between a card being used contactless-ly, and a Wallet Pay transaction.
He kinda had to give me the tea free because I’d already slurped it by the time he caught up with the trolley and put through the transaction. I didn’t think to ask him to cancel and put it through again. Cost of a teabag? A fraction of a penny.
It’s an incorrectly configured terminal from the sounds of it. If it can’t perform an online transaction it can be configured to fail or failback to offline. This then depends on if your bank has authorised offline transactions on your card/digital wallet token.
But as others have suggested. Cancel the transaction and try again should work if it goes back online.
When you touch your phone it will share if it’s MasterCard or visa, credit/debit, of it allows offline transactions (and up to how much). It can also share authorisation data. You will see on some receipts it says “cardholder device verified” or similar.
Banks can then apply limits per transaction, per time period. As can merchants/merchant acquirers.
I was in Tesco the other day, used my card for contactless… it said “please insert card” and I got the notification telling me to use Chip and Pin. I just used Apple Pay instead and it worked.
Sounds like a store/terminal issue rather than Monzo tbh
Yes but it’s a thing to periodically require you to put your card in after several contactless transactions, for security. That terminal was behaving correctly.
As others have said, there nothing wrong with the terminal in your case. Here’s aMonzo blog post about the feature:
As you say, using Apple pay (or Google pay) will get around the issue. I’ve scarcely used my actual card for years now because it’s easier to just use my phone instead.
This is exactly what happens. Whenever I’ve paid for something on a ferry or plane, the transaction goes through when you get to the destination and the terminal can connect
Yes, I used Apple Pay so wasn’t able to insert anything. You used your card for contactless, so were able to insert that when asked in the supermarket.
I had that in Asda once… never worked out what it was. Google pay contactless, and it came up with a pin prompt but it didn’t call it a pin, something else. Tried the phone pin and the card pin, nada… had to pay with a different account.
I think sometimes these termnials just have a mind of their own.
Were you watching something on your phone @j06 or had your phone unlocked for a long time before paying?
I’ve had it in the past where I’ve for example been using my phone as a satnav, gone into a petrol station and then tried to pay with Google Pay, but when I put my phone near the reader it asks for my fingerprint before it lets me attempt to pay again.
I can’t remember exactly what the reader does - I think it says something along the lines of ‘check device’
I imagine an incorrectly configured terminal would ask you to insert your card and enter your PIN at this point.
To give this a little extra background, you don’t need to be holding the fingerprint scanner whilst you’re paying with Google Pay, as long as you’ve recently unlocked your device, it will work (it also works from the lock screen without unlocking, but that’s another story for another day).
I’m aware of being able to authorise the Pay card before it’s needed (and indeed I find it excruciating when transport users here in London try to ‘touch in’ whilst simultaneously trying to place their fingerprint on the device).
For what it’s worth, I had been using my phone as a personal hotspot for my iPad, but my wallet is FaceID, and I would’ve double clicked the side button to activate the card and authorisation.
Can confirm, weirdly configured terminal in this case.
It could not go online for whatever reason, and fell back to an offline contact EMV transaction without taking note that the device told the terminal that it does not have a contact interface.
This.