Thursday, October 20, 2011

Barclay - Joined up banking

Being an Egg customer my credit card is now being moved over to Barclay. Frankly I wouldn't really care except

a) they've changed my PIN;
b) it now features the VISA contactless system which would allow a thief to buy a slew of £15 products before I noticed it was gone... okay I've just checked it will ask for my PIN "every now and again, for security purposes"; and
c) Along with my card was another missive from Barclay asking if I wanted a Barclay Credit Card.

I've had a look at all the places I can use my wonderful new contactless credit card. At least I tried to look. Using VISA's fantastic map system simply tap in a postcode or town to view such stores.

Excellent except some are in completely the wrong place or have no identifying information and it will only show information within a radius of that location. Tap in "Stourport" and scroll around the map and there are no locations in Kidderminster. Of course there are they just don't get displayed until I tap in "Kidderminster" Gosh yes because I don't travel more than 2 miles away in case I get lost and scared. At least it's easy to see each location oh wait no I have to click on each rather than being able to hover over it.

At least I can use it at "Weavers Wharf Retail Park" which as everyone knows is located on Worcester Road on the way to Hoobrook. Although personally I would prefer to use it at "." in Worcester Street.

2 comments:

Orphi said...

I cannot for the life of me begin to imagine why anybody would want to make it faster to spend money. I don't know about you, but my problem isn't not being able to spend money fast enough…

I had a look at Wikipedia, and it turns out people have done studies and found that contactless [which isn't a word by the way] payment technologies tend to encourage people to spend more on small transactions, since it's now less hassle to perform them.

OK, step back a moment. You see what this is? This isn't for your benefit at all. It's for the benefit of all those people who want you to give them your money. Those merchants must love having a new technology that makes people more willing to spend money!

Also, I love the way the page talks about all the various security features in the cards. Because, you know, we're talking about a system where any arbitrary person who possesses the physical card can spend your money for you with no authentication of any kind. Any suggestion of security is purely an illusion. :-P

I wander… is there any way you can legally force the bank to disable this absurd technology?

FlipC said...

"I cannot for the life of me begin to imagine why anybody would want to make it faster to spend money"

Heh of course you've answered your own question - those whom you are borrowing money from want you to spend money faster; those with whom you are spending money want you to spend it faster and the only say you as a customer have over the matter is not to succumb.