What are your Investment Rules?

[Snoopy]

If you turn it off in the app then should make no difference where you are, when it tries to process the payment it will decline.

Have done a similar thing when overseas, as had a limit on the amount could spend in one transaction at a time, and forgot to turn that off or increase the amount and wondering why my card was declined - until I realized.

I guess you are assuming that payments can be transferred in real time across the world. I can believe such a thing happens within New Zealand within the same 'home' banking system. Ideally I would like to think the same would be true from anywhere in the world. But I doubt that this is true. I suspect what really happens is that there is a certain threshold level where everyday transactions are allowed to go through up to a dollar limit. If that were not the case then any outage, through faults or overloading, anywhere in the chain -no matter how transient- would crash the whole system. To get around that I would expect there to be a buffer system where transactions are held for a period until they go through. Of course it would be impractical to hold all account users anywhere in the world at the payment terminal until every payment went through. This is why I am speculating that a buffer system exists.

Given your instructions to disable paywave in New Zealand would be held in New Zealand within the banking system here, I cannot see how these instructions to deactivate paywave could be received anywhere in the world in real time on a reliable basis.

SNOOPY

[Jay]

It could be via the App/ Apple pay etc when you use payWave - does it update the card chip -then it would not matter where you are - more especially if you set it up in NZ.
I'm sure I changed mine in the app while overseas, then it worked!

[Snoopy]

It could be via the App/ Apple pay etc when you use payWave - does it update the card chip -then it would not matter where you are - more especially if you set it up in NZ.
I'm sure I changed mine in the app while overseas, then it worked!

Sounds plausible. But I think we may be talking cross purposes. You are talking about operating your paywave via your phone. I am talking about operating paywave via a card (yes some of us still have those). I don't think a card can be reprogrammed like you suggest.

SNOOPY

[thegreatestben]

This is BNZ but yes you can turn off paywave for your card and other options.
It's not the card that determines what can happen, it all happens via visa or mastercards payment systems. The card itself is simply programmed with a unique identifier which is checked at POS, no different to checking if you have money in your bank account. There's no money loaded on the card.

IMG_5026.jpg

[Baa_Baa]

[...] I am talking about operating paywave via a card (yes some of us still have those). I don't think a card can be reprogrammed like you suggest.

SNOOPY

Do you have an online banking that you can access from your PC? If you do, login in to your online banking and go to 'Manage my cards' (or something like that), you'll see an option to 'turn off Contactless Payments' (or something like that). This should be available for any Credit or Debit card that you have.

Screenshot 2024-08-06 at 8.43.00 AM.png
Westpac example for a Mastercard Credit Card

[Bjauck]

Snoops you can save yourself some time. Just go into your banking app-under card settings you can toggle off Contactless purchases.

I block my cards in the app, and only activate them before purchasing. It only blocks the plastic card, not Apple Pay on my phone, which I often use. I also carry about $50 in cash for small purchases too!

Blocking and unblocking your card

https://www.bnz.co.nz/support/mobile...king-your-card

[Snoopy]

This is BNZ but yes you can turn off paywave for your card and other options.
It's not the card that determines what can happen, it all happens via visa or mastercards payment systems. The card itself is simply programmed with a unique identifier which is checked at POS, no different to checking if you have money in your bank account. There's no money loaded on the card.

Thanks Ben, but I think you have said rather more eloquently the point I was trying to make. The card, when it comes down to it, is nothing more than a pre-programmed piece of plastic. You can't alter the programming within a card. It is the software in the payment system that controls what is happening.

If you move to a different payment system in another country, then that payment system will have to contact your 'home' payment system to pick up the 'no paywave' instruction you have put on your card. And I don't think you can guarantee this will happen all the time, within real time. This is why I say there must be some kind of 'buffer' in the system. Put your payment in the buffer, and it will not receive the 'no paywave' signal.

SNOOPY

[thegreatestben]

I can assure you from recent personal experience that it does indeed work on the spot from overseas with a physical card. The card vendors would never get this technology into the market if there was any buffers or risk in the transactions being assumed.

[Snoopy]

I can assure you from recent personal experience that it does indeed work on the spot from overseas with a physical card.

Would you care to expand on what you mean with the word 'work'?

Do you mean:
a/ You have used paywave overseas with your physical card. OR
b/ You have turned off paywave on you card in New Zealand, and when presenting your card overseas to make a paywave transaction it was declined.

The card vendors would never get this technology into the market if there was any buffers or risk in the transactions being assumed.

I would expect there would be a limit on buffered transactions. Transactions over the limit would require a full 'connect to base' approval. But transactions under the limit would be flagged through. Any transactions that 'went bad' would be covered by some kind of insurance system (maybe the banks would just 'suck it' and cover any such losses themselves?). Remember we are talking about only a small number of transactions here.

Maybe you are not old enough to remember the 'zip zap' days. That was pre-electronic terminals. When you went up to the counter to pay, the shop assistant took your credit card, and put it into a machine that created an original and gestetner copy of your bill. The merchant at the end of the day collected up all the copies of the bills and send them off to either 'Visa' or 'Mastercard' to receive payment, which was BTW guaranteed by the card providers. How did the shop assistant know that you had not overspent your credit limit? They didn't. But the card holder knew if, come the end of the month, they had over spent their credit limit the bank would likely cancel their card. So there was a good customer incentive not to overspend.

Why am I telling you about the 'zip zap' days? Because that was in effect 'a buffer system'. Credit accounts were not processed in real time. With an electronic system you can process transactions in real time. But I would suggest, particularly when you are overseas, not always. If a buffer system existed for all transactions in the past, why do you think it could not exist for transactions that don't instantly connect now?

SNOOPY