Many Capital One credit cards are now being issued with contactless payment capabilities, meaning that you can tap the card to pay without needing to swipe or insert. Swiping and inserting will still work too.
Eligible cards are Quicksilver, Venture, and VentureOne.
They won’t be replacing current credit cards, but all future cards being sent out (as of around a month ago) are all contactless enabled.
I hadn’t been aware that any cards are NFC-enabled, but apparently it’s common outside the US on various credit cards or even bus passes. Now that US payment terminals are mostly NFC-enabled, card issuers will probably start issuing these kinds of cards to us as well.
Of course, mobile wallets are contactless, in any case. But if you pay using the physical card, you’ll be able to tap it without swiping or inserting with these eligible cards.
Thanks to Adam and to r/churning
This is good news. I personally prefer tapping a card to tapping my phone. FYI, several other big issuers offer contactless as well.
Amex: not by default but you can request one.
Citi: at least Citi Costco card has contactless
HSBC
Wells Fargo
You can get NFC card upon request from some issuers. Amex offers NFC cards, even for Plat.
Interesting. Wonder if that’s only Platinum and I wonder if other card issuers also will send it upon request.
Amex is the main card issuer that offers contactless across most of the card lineup in the US. They state this for availability:
“Contactless chip is currently available on the majority of Consumer products and the following Small Business Cards: Blue for Business® Credit Card and Starwood Guest® Business Credit Card.”
https://www.americanexpress.com/us/content/chip/faqs-contactless.html
My EDP has it.
Interesting. Did you request that?
No. PCed a couple of months ago. As someone else mentioned, I remember having contactless on an Amex blue card years ago. Just no where to use it.
The transactions are definitely faster than the chips ones.
I don’t understand the point of contactless. Are people too lazy to swipe or insert the card? I don’t really want to get one of these.
My thoughts exactly. I never understood the appeal.
Convenience?
What’s inconvenient about swiping/inserting your card?
I did not say swiping or inserting was inconvenient, but tapping is just easier. You don’t have to align the card with the reader, you don’t even have to take it out of your wallet if it’s the only card there. I’m not trying to convince anybody, but it’s something you get used to very quickly.
“you don’t even have to take it out of your wallet if it’s the only card there.”
Though how often would anyone reading this site only have 1 card in their wallet? 😉
It’s a lot faster than chip and pin and more secure than mag stripe.
The original contactless payments (like paypass and paywave) did not encrypt the data, and there’s plenty of info online about how to steal it. The new contactless payments should be (hopefully) encrypted using the same chip that’s already on the card, which should make stealing it much trickier (and therefore much more expensive).
Hopefully? Until tried-and-true, I’ll stick with the chip. Despite people complaining about how long it takes, it’s actually very fast. It takes more time for every store’s loyalty card to be swiped.
My US HSBC Platinum Mastercard has been contactless for at least a year or two.
Welcome to the future! Now, let’s see how they will screw this one up as they did with useless chip and signature vs chip and pin cards….
Yes, tap and go is extremely popular in many places. A few times I was in Australia in the last year, it was always a pain to pay with my chip and signature card.
Everyone would just tap and go while I would slow everything down with my Prestige card by inserting it. Then the cashier would usually mess something up because when people tap, they get an essentially “transaction finished” pop up on the screen that they dismiss. But when a card is inserted/swiped a different button is shown in the same place but they hit it automatically and that cancels the transaction. So then they have to redo it. Then I reinsert. Sometimes they still hit the wrong button. If it does go through, now they have to go find a pen since nobody ever signs anything these days – chip and pin, the previous generation technology everyone used, just had you enter your pin on the terminal. Frantic pen searches would usually take another 30 seconds to a minute… in the meantime, I’d try to lighten up a mood of the people getting pissed behind me by apologizing for using a third-world credit card.
I guess this is another benefit the Titans are overlooking in their never ending Prestige pump – you can become a stand-up comedian while using this premier, yet still useless credit card.
This didn’t happen once or twice. Probably half of all my transactions over weeks of time I spent down under went like that and I actually started using cash more to avoid the embarrassment.
So, because it’s normal in Australia, American cards should have it? Seems like the reverse argument is just as valid: Australia should go all swipe since that’s what we do in America.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.
Why should the rest of the world be held back by the poor choices of the US?
It’s not only Australia. But you don’t see the value of NFC payments until you go somewhere like that where usage is at 90%+ of all transactions.
Meanwhile some merchants still don’t have chip capable readers here… but yeah everyone should go back 30 years so they can be like us.
Let’s go back to writing checks while were at it.
When I was in Iceland, I had to use my ATM card at the gas station because their card reader wouldn’t even accept transaction without a PIN.
What’s a little bizzare is that some merchants have their readers programmed not to take contactless payments even though the hardware (pimpad) supports it. CVS is one of those merchants currently, at least in my area. Attempting to use Android Pay resulted in the terminal saying something akin to: ‘Contactless payments are not supported, please use a different payment type’
They signed up for the Walmart-led effort to create their own (terribly inconvenient) version of contactless wallet that’s why they have the convenient options disabled on their terminal. Luckily, that has now been shelved but I guess they still don’t want to reenable the easy option…
They are trying to block Apple Pay. They had to block all contactless payments to do that because of the nature of apple pay
Nope. They can accept Android Pay and not Apple Pay if they choose.
I don’t think so. Sources?
I’m a software engineer?
NFC broadcasts are used for many things. For example, you can detect and Android device via Android Beam.
It’s all technically possible, but retailers have no real incentive to allow it or invest the money in getting it to work.
You are certainly right but that’s not what I meant. With the current software they can’t
Years ago most cards were contactless. Chase offered contactless, Discover had Zip (and a contactless sticker for your phone), Amex has ExpressPay (still offered!).
Then almost all issuers got rid of the feature due to American Paranoia of thieves wireless stealing card numbers even though they are NEVER liable for FRAUD!!!
Glad the feature is coming back as I don’t use mobile payments.
it’s true about not being liable for fraud… but it’s still a hassle if it happens.
i personally use ApplePay everywhere I can… I actually changed grocery stores because my old one stopped taking ApplePay (and discovering the new store is slightly cheaper actually).
Sure we’re not liable for fraud, but that money is lost and someone holds the bag. Whether it’s us (for not filing a claim), the bank, or an insurance company, it’s still inefficiency.
Agreed, Dave. They are basically saying, “Sure it’s not secure, but you won’t be liable for it.” While nice I still have to go through the hassle of changing cards and worrying about other info that may have been linked.