Regular readers will know that Zil & I have done blogs over the years where we relay our payment experiences in different countries. These are as much to highlight that while we may call payments similar things, the experience can be quite different. Often then its the differences that are interesting, rather than any implied criticism.
In the last 6 months, I have been lucky enough to travel to (I think!) to more than ten different countries. In this blog, I’m more focussing on expectations as much as anything. No criticism is meant, but more perhaps that we shouldn’t assume we know what to expect.
Contactless is widespread, in all but three of the countries I visited. Trying to understand what the contactless limit was though in each currency was somewhat trickier! It was these three countries that intrigued me most, as I, and I’m sure many of us do, had pre-conceptions. These are small sample sets – I may have been unlucky.
For example, there were many dire warnings about going to China, from fraud, to not being able to use cards, to not understanding anything. Yet, everything was easy and smooth to use, particularly the apps. DiDi in particular was a better experience than a Western ride hailing app, and not only was it in English, but there was also in-app translation, making it very easy. Alipay and WePay were a little fiddly to set-up, but again, a doddle to use. And all three main card schemes were accepted at large hotels and restaurants in Beijing. Travelling round China by train was also very easy. So contactless may have been widespread, but we just never were even offered the opportunity – either it was in app, QR code or sufficiently high value that we used a PIN.
Tokyo though was more of an eye-opener. I assumed high-tech and futuristic. I’ve been many times before to Japan, but not for a while. This time I couldn’t find a metro ticket booth that would use any non-Japanese card, nor would any ATM. While admittedly I did manage to use my cards later, the ride hailing app relied on you paying in the taxi itself, not in the app. Only a short stay, so fewer payment occasions, but contactless wasn’t offered once, nor were the payment experiences very slick.
The US once again was confusing. Contactless, swipe, pin and signature. Often all in the same transaction. Many times. I did not manage a single “true” contactless payment, and in most cases, the staff took away the card. Now, I recognise that is the norm in the US, but to those from other countries, it makes us worried. We're given dire warnings about ever letting the card out of our sight And if nothing else, its inefficient. Nor was paying with my phone widely accepted. At home, I literally use my phone or tap my card for 90% of all transactions, so it all felt odd and a little like stepping back in time to a decade or so.
The original draft of this blog stopped here, but a final part of this story came a few weeks later. Or, more accurately about a month after we got home from our last trip in the US. All three cards my wife and I used all suffered fraud, resulting in the replacing of our cards. To be fair, the banks involved were on it and alerted us before we knew. We had new digital cards within minutes and had replacement physical cards in 48 hours. We can never know where they were stolen – we never used all the cards at the same merchant, so it suggests that it wasn’t a one off. And all the attempted transaction were in the US, which would seem to suggest that the card details were taken in the US.
It's difficult not to draw a conclusion that the lack of use of PIN, or even contactless, was in some way related to the fraud. Indeed, that’s why CHIP & PIN was introduced. Yet it’s also likely an educational issue. The experience can’t be seen as good but is possibly seen as an extension of what they’ve always done. A focus on what the experience could be like, and explaining how that would be beneficial for the customer and merchant is likely a good place to start.
