What we (well me) are talking about is a few things.
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Monzo jumped on £100 (and reserving £30 for offline transactions). Imho they have over interpreted the spec in taking offline into consideration and not gone with £135 like Starling and other fintechs. It takes an already low amount (imo) and reduces it unnecessarily further.
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No legacy bank has met the 14 September deadline to my knowledge and are now working to the 14 March 2020 deadline. Or failing that deadline the 14th March 2021 deadline before the FCA said they will kick off (or extend it again if not enough banks have done it).
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By the fintechs jumping on implementing it on time they have started impacting and inconveniencing customers before any other banks have got round to it. By the time 2021 comes we might actually have biometric cards that act the same as phones so potentially legacy bank customers may never be affected by the limits.
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There was a bit about Revolut having a tap to reset the limit in app which of course Monzo could champion, but Monzo (or Monzo staff) have mentioned they are worried about having their banking license taken away if they did this, and Revolut can afford to be a bit more reckless being an e-money and be a bit of a rebel in pushing the spec.
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Theres also talk about how the UK if affected more by this because we don’t have contactless and pin here. Not much we can do about it now.
So we get tap > payment decline > know idea why could be any reason “Do you have enough money? Can you try another card?” > cancel that > start a new transaction using chip and pin where the card needs to be inserted.
They get tap > “payment needs pin” > types pin to confirm.
- Because the spec is in Euros it means that the limit (current 150 euros) needs to be converted into the currency of the account so they aren’t working out how much £ is Euro all the time. It’s recalculated roughly what 150 is worth and locked in at set specific times. So as an example Starlings is £135. FCA don’t care about this or leaving wiggle room just thats “in the spirit” of the spec.
- Theres also talk of why they though it was a good idea to implement in 2019 when we’ve had contactless working fine for the best part of a decade and customers have always had fraud protection and been covered. It does diddly squat to help with a huge impact on the customer and merchants imo. Again not much we can do about it now, other than use Google Pay/Apple Pay which isn’t affected by this.
- There is also the other side of SCA which is about confirming identity more often, which means having your app randomly ask you to enter pin. This feels again unnecessary to me. If you’ve stolen my phone and have stolen my thumbprints or can bypass with faking my face and have my pin, and I haven’t alerted Monzo that my phones be stolen and changed my pin within about two months of it being stolen, and the fraud dept having spotted something odd, then yes they can have my money.
@alawrence I’ve got evidence this morning through the SCA team that Lloyds 100% has not implemented SCA but are trying to do it by the new extension of 14 March 2020 but might not happen, worse case before the March 2021 date. They currently have no defined limit of what that will be when it comes into play. (I was also told I can do 30 contactless transactions in the same day which wasn’t what I had asked)
I see its like waking up and having someone immediately stand on your foot every single day. For the first 100 times you might be “what the hell, I’ve just woken up why are you standing on my foot?” after the 1000 time this happens it might start to become the new normal and not be such a “ball ache”.
My point is they shouldn’t be stepping on your foot in the first place.