Real-time authorisations

Yes, the problem there of course is what if you don’t have a data connection.

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Not exactly, there are a few main differences:

  1. Approval before the transaction and nothing afterwards VS defrosting the card before and freezing it after
  2. Other (fraudulent) transactions could go through in this short window of time - selecting rejected transaction to allow it next time would prevent that
  3. This approach will not work with automatic payments that could happen at any day and time (e.g. TfL’s Oyster auto top-up)
  4. White list could practically eliminate need for approvals depending on the use case - I can only speak for myself, but I have a bunch of online services which I use regularly and a couple of places where I go for lunch. That’s about 20-30 items on the white list that would completely eliminate the need for approving transactions for me, with the exception of when I am on holidays.

I have never had a fraudulent transaction on any of my cards. It’s such a tiny percentage that I’m not sure there’s a need. If it does happen Monzo refund within an hour.
What happens if you have no data/signal/battery and want to buy something you happen to see on sale?

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Until another data breach of a service where you have your card remembered (like Ticketmaster recently).

Preventing it would save time and effort for both sides and potentially a lot of money for Monzo in case of fraudulent transactions that cannot be reverted (e.g. ATM withdrawal)

That’s a risk you might or might not want to take. Again it depends on the use case - I rarely fall for such sales and rarely have no data/signal/battery.

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No it’s not. Even if you only have that problem 1% of the time (which is optimistic) you have a real problem when you do.

I appreciate the fact that you have good intentions here but it seems like you haven’t really thought this through. As you’ve mentioned, issuers have an incentive to reduce fraud so if this was a good idea, it would have been done already, it’s not hard to implement.

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6 posts were split to a new topic: User confirmation when fraudulent transactions have been flagged

8 posts were split to a new topic: Removed Posts - 3/7/18

And what about that 1% of times when the merchant has problems with their terminal or connection is down and you cannot pay with card at all? Or what about stalls on the food market which often accept cash only? Should we all give up our cards and go back to cash only, because in 1% of cases you cannot use your card anyway?

Then help improve this idea.

This is an old blog post, but shows the different stages of a transaction:

My memory from previous discussions on this forum is that the 200ms requirement comes from the card network (Mastercard in this case). I assume this is so that transactions don’t take too long end-to-end.

Often the long time you see the card machine ‘authorising’ for is because that initial connection from the shop to the acquirer takes a while. Some shops still use dial-up modems for this. :open_mouth:

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Yes as far as I know, it’s only Monzo that has to respond within the 200ms window, presumably because other steps of the process can take such a long time :grimacing:

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It’s Monzo’s (or any other bank’s) job to identify fraud in the background. I shouldn’t be bothered by manually having to approve every spend on my card.

Monzo introduces this and the friction it causes sends everyone straight back to the High Street where they have deep pockets to bail themselves out after a fraud takes place.

If you’re worried about your card being used by another party, just keep it frozen in the app.

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Hey all, things got a bit heated here. So I’ve removed the posts that were off-topic.

To be clear: this thread is about the idea of requiring an approval to authorise all transactions.

There’s a similar, but separate, idea about sending approval authorisations when we suspect a specific transaction is fradulent here.

So let’s discuss each of these in their own threads. And keep the comments on-topic please, thanks.

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That’s why:

  1. it would be optional feature, not mandatory
  2. there would be a white list, so you could still be more secure without having to approve transactions

That won’t work, I listed reasons in my previous post: Real-time authorisations - #13 by Jarcionek

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That’s a lot less common than not having a data connection.

You generally know that before you go to purchase the item. Whereas if you need a taxi late at night or have a trolley full of items in a supermarket, that’s a bigger problem. There are certain places where you can anticipate not being able to pay by card & there are others where you can’t or it’s particularly bad if you can’t. This being an optional feature doesn’t solve the situations that you don’t anticipate.

No, you’re missing the point, this will cause more problems than it solves - which is presumably why issuers haven’t done this already.

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I don’t have any fraud data to be able to categorically say one way or another but it feels like a solution to a problem that doesn’t need to be solved.

I agree prevent is better than cure but this would be an intrusive solution to a problem (I’m guessing, without data) that not many people would actually suffer from - I know I’ve never been a victim of card fraud, as yet. It doesn’t seem like the sort of smooth transaction/process a fintech would want to implement I don’t think. I imagine they would rather try and prevent in the background.

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Depends where you are. Living in London, the only place where I don’t have signal/data is the tube.

You would probably use the same taxi as you always use, so white list solves a problem. Or if you know you will be coming back home late at night, you can disable the feature for that night or define some advance approval.

I would quote yourself here and say that you generally know before you go to the supermarket to do big grocery shopping.

This depends a lot on the person - you might not know where you will be in the evening on the same day, while I might have my entire day planned 24h ahead.

You consider your own actions (like going to supermarket or getting a taxi) something that cannot be anticipated. At the same time you are saying that situations which are entirely outside of your control (broken terminal, power outage, network failure) and cannot be anticipated are ok, because they are rare.

And once again I would like to highlight feature being optional. If your life is so unpredictable, I fully agree that you shouldn’t be forced to have this feature enabled.

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That’s true, but to quote from this post Real-time authorisations - #13 by Jarcionek

Other (fraudulent) transactions could go through in this short window of time - selecting rejected transaction to allow it next time would prevent that

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Hey all,

This is a strange and potentially niche feature request, but I’d love to see a mode where all payments (except standing orders?) require the approval, rather than just some.

After reading the blog post about financial control, I think this is an extra step to really make a person think about if they REALLY want that game subscription to roll over this month.

I think for some people it could land them in a bit of hot water if signal was lost or something, but I’d be really intrigued to see something like this.

Cheers,
Lee

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This has been mentioned before but the problem is that in the absence of VBV or whatever Monzo have milliseconds to respond to the transaction - they can’t wait for you to approve anything.

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Yeah AFAIK the only payments via debit card that Monzo can stop to verify with users is through merchants that implement 3DS for the transaction. So it couldn’t be implemented in the way that you’re thinking. But if you realise in advance it may be possible for them to implement a feature to block the subscription from that specific merchant, I’m not sure.

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