DaleB
Final Approach
Might have been me, I used to have to dash into one occasionally to change out of my mild-mannered cover identity.
[NA] Over engineered "improvements"
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2-Bit Speed
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2-Bit Speed
No. You said, "there is a certain expectation that you keep up with what the tech companies are doing." I do not want my local restaurants keeping up with cell phone technology. I don't want a thousand and one apps to be required for everyday life.
GaryM
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Gary M
Start reading, end to end, the terms and conditions most people blindly agree to when installing apps and you’ll understand why apps are to be hated.
For a long time the gate at the local airport I used had a keypad which was intermittent but there was a secret button on the back rear of the unit that just opened the gate if you pushed it.
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Jim
The answer is either:
A) Yes, I would, because my wallet has my credit cards, which only require a tap at the point-of-sale to make charges.
or
B) No, because credit card liability is limited to $50 if theft is promptly reported, which would cover either use of my cards or fraud via my phone.
If you're asking, "Are you worried about the data on your phone?" Generally, no. Most phone thefts are for the phone itself, not the contents. It's not impossible to get past the lock screen, but it's also not trivial, and if I was left upright and functional then as soon as I could get to another internet-connected device I could remotely deact/wipe the phone.
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Jim
So I guess you don't carry tap-to-pay-enabled credit cards either?
Whatever rationale you use to justify those also applies to phones.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
Isn’t an advantage with the phone that it needs to be unlocked to be used for tap and pay?
DaleB
Final Approach
I've only used mine a few times for that. The first, really, was in London, where it got me in and out of the Underground system a couple times a day for a couple weeks. Tap the phone on the little pad, the gate opens, in or out you go. No unlocking. There was something, I believe, that I needed to specifically set up for that, though. I don't think it was an app, but that was a while back and I don't remember the details.
I've used it only couple of times at POS terminals, andI think it makes me double-click the side button and Face ID for that.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
I don’t have Face ID (older iPhone). When I use it at a gas pump or register I don’t need to unlock the phone, I don’t think, but I do have to use a fingerprint to complete the payment.
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3G
Depends on settings. Most tap payments I actually use the iWatch for that since your mobile wallet can have selective items on the watch wallet.
The upside is the phone doesn’t have to be with you to use that feature.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
The phone doesn’t need to be with you to use the watch?
What if you get separated from the watch, can it be used by someone else?
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Jim
Yes. Using a phone to pay involves at least some additional ID/security feature, versus using a credit card, which can simply be tapped or inserted in any point-of-sale terminal without any additional ID or security check required.
My point was, whatever rationale you use to get comfortable using that utterly insecure credit card, also applies to using credit card data in your phone...except moreso, because in addition to whatever makes you comfortable using the CC by itself, the phone includes extra security features (if you set it up right and use them, anyway). At any rate, even if you have no security on the phone at all, it's no less secure than the actual credit card re: pickpockets.
flyingcheesehead
Taxi to Parking
Let's look at what I said again:
The COMPANIES who make the apps need to keep up with what the tech companies are doing. Apple keeps offering newer security and convenience features, and if you have a company with an app, I expect you to take advantage of said security features (at least) within a reasonable amount of time.
There is no excuse to not be accepting more secure payment methods these days... And if you want me to give you my money, it behooves you to make it as easy as possible.
I did not say that users need to use the latest and greatest. I don't care what the rest of you are using. You are free to make your own lives more difficult and less secure if you so choose.
If you've used it, you know.
If you haven't... Well, there's not much to "setting it up". It's more difficult than using a credit card once. It's probably easier than using a credit card twice, and it makes transactions way easier for the entire future so it will save you time.
But again, I don't care if YOU use it. *I* just want to be *able to* use it. If you have a company that chooses not to implement it, you have less of a chance of earning my money.
That's fer dang sure. You should have as many forms of payment as possible, so that everyone can use their most preferred method.
Tesla's app is fantastic...
...and everyone else's pretty much is at various levels of suck. Tesla recognizes that they're a software company that happens to make cars, and their app and infotainment systems are on a completely different level than everyone else's. And yes, having to pay for any level of suck makes me not a happy camper.I hate with every bone in my body the Audi App on my wife's Q7 (even after having to pay for it)
Where the rest of us have Face ID, you'll have to use Touch ID. It's secured, one way or the other.
No, only the first generation or two required that.
I have had the watch save my butt when I left my phone on the handy wireless charging spot in my car, thus leaving the car unlocked. I was in a situation where I wouldn't have been able to return to the car for a couple hours, but I was able to lock it remotely from my watch and unlock it from my watch when I returned.
I also have some shortcuts set up on my watch so that when my hands are full of stuff, I can say "Hey Siri, open my trunk" and it opens up. It's Dick Tracy/Inspector Gadget/Knight Rider/Star Trek come to life.
No. The watch uses a passcode to unlock, and it automatically locks as soon as it's off your wrist. There is an option for auto-unlocking if you put it on your wrist and then unlock your phone with Face ID/Touch ID.
luvflyin
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I did a quick scan through the thread. Didn’t notice anything about flying stuff. Like GPS Navigators and ‘buttonology.’ Talk about taking something simple and complicating it.
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3G
Nope, phone doesn’t have to be in the same physical area as the watch for the watch wallet to work. I use watch wallet for tap to pay, boarding passes, event tix, and my gym’s membership card lets me tap to enter. Doesn’t matter if the watch is cellular enabled or not, on wifi or not. My watch was purchased in June, 2020.
As soon as the watch loses contact with your skin, it locks and requires the passcode to be entered before any function can be accessed, assuming you’ve enabled auto-lock in the watch settings.
I hate being reliant on having a phone on/near me but the watch is almost always there, is unobtrusive, and tap to pay works just the same.
Shepherd
Final Approach
I am banned, forever, from a nearby diner because I refuse to use the QR code, online app, or my credit card to pay for meals.
After the third time insisting on using cash, the owner came out and told me to never darken their door again.
Some places just make it tooooo easy to have fun.
After the third time insisting on using cash, the owner came out and told me to never darken their door again.
Some places just make it tooooo easy to have fun.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
Around here we have QuikTrip gas stations. Paying at the pump is like any other place, but the fun happens inside at the counter. QTs are pretty popular for the convenience store operation. During the morning and lunch rush the lines inside can get long and there are lots of people that pay in cash. My brother was visiting one time and we went inside a QT to pick up a bunch of coffees and breakfast items for our group. I said, “Watch this!” The cashiers were handling two customers each, cash, and making change faster than they could ring it up. And I see that at all the QTs I’ve gone to. They almost seem to sigh when someone wants to pay with a card because that actually takes longer.
It gives me hope for the future.
MauleSkinner
Touchdown! Greaser!
I’ll also note that, at least around here, QT employees know how to make and count change, and are seldom thrown off by nickels, dimes, and pennies that make the change come out more even.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
I’ve seen that, too. Pretty cool.
And they do that with a line of customers on the left side of the register and another on the right, two at a time. If making change were an Olympic event they would win so often they’d be disqualified.
There are apps for everything to make life easier, or more profitable.
Anybody heard of Synapse? They created amazing neat apps to do your banking on line. Higher interest rates than at a high cost bricks and morter bank.
Interesting story in the WSJ this morning.
Several companies used their apps and the associated real FDIC insured bank to create online banks, and millions of dollars flowed through the apps.
An executive at Synapse noticed that the interest flowing back to the depositors was below expectations, and called in an auditor.
It seems that millions of dollars of deposits did not flow through, but paused at Synapse. That money is not covered by FDIC insurance.
The auditor bailed out, as it became clear that Synapse could not continue to pay them as they were was not solvent if they tried to return the money to the depositors, and bankruptcy court is now sorting out the details.
Apps can be amazing useful, but we do not know just what is "Under the hood" of that magic, and even years later, when we have become completely confident in it and put much of our money in it, it goes upside down, and we are stuck in limbo until the court resolves it.
This often takes years, and the money comes in drips and drops.
Anybody heard of Synapse? They created amazing neat apps to do your banking on line. Higher interest rates than at a high cost bricks and morter bank.
Interesting story in the WSJ this morning.
Several companies used their apps and the associated real FDIC insured bank to create online banks, and millions of dollars flowed through the apps.
An executive at Synapse noticed that the interest flowing back to the depositors was below expectations, and called in an auditor.
It seems that millions of dollars of deposits did not flow through, but paused at Synapse. That money is not covered by FDIC insurance.
The auditor bailed out, as it became clear that Synapse could not continue to pay them as they were was not solvent if they tried to return the money to the depositors, and bankruptcy court is now sorting out the details.
Apps can be amazing useful, but we do not know just what is "Under the hood" of that magic, and even years later, when we have become completely confident in it and put much of our money in it, it goes upside down, and we are stuck in limbo until the court resolves it.
This often takes years, and the money comes in drips and drops.
2-Bit Speed
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2-Bit Speed
And how much of that requires a phone app as opposed to a website?
schmookeeg
En-Route
Synapse was a bad situation.
I'm expecting Tether to be a worse one when it finally gets some sunlight.
I still agree with the premise that a merchant should make getting paid as easy on the customer as possible, including the whims and fancies of that customer. If that means accepting tap-pay, apple cards, venmo... so be it. Hate the apps after business hours and after the cheddar is counted.
Shepherd
Final Approach
During my tenure at IBM, I was part of the team that helped create and maintain the machines that were the first foray into "modern machine banking" as IBM PR called it.
To this day, I do not have a debit card, have never withdrawn money from an ATM, and do not have any phone or online banking apps.
It's just too easy to crack online accounts.
To this day, I do not have a debit card, have never withdrawn money from an ATM, and do not have any phone or online banking apps.
It's just too easy to crack online accounts.
Of course, you'd also need to secure all these access points whether you intend to use them or not. Nothing lives on paper anymore.
Years ago I was buying some furniture and stuff (including a motorized projection screen) from a S&L that the RTC took over. Getting down to the end of the day, there was an ATM on casters up for auction. I bid $20 (probably too much) and won it. A while after I had it, someone sabotaged the ATMs in a Connecticut Mall and put a similar machine in there and actually paid out cash while collecting account numbers and pins. The perpetrators then went down to NYC and used the info to make numerous withdrawals. Just about everybody who knew me sent the clipping on that story.
Later when computer hacker Kevin Poulson was on trial Poulson had his lawyer attend my computer security class to get an idea of the culture. One of the charges was that they had confiscated "access devices" which turned out to be ancient Veriphone credit card terminals. I pointed out that lots of us had played with those things at one time or another and that I had an ATM myself. I offered to ship the thing to him if it would help him with the case. I ended up giving it away after a while to get it out of my garage.
Your middle name isn’t Hollerith, by any chance? -Skip
There's a plaque in Georgetown (DC) commemorating Holleriths contributions to the census (and technology in general). I've got a picture of me and a close friend (another pilot and computer geek) standing in front of it somewhere. I've had this item sitting on my desk for 40 years. It is an extreme rare person who recognizes what it is...
That there looks like a gen-you-wine Hollerith Ashtray!
I was working a swing shift through '23; this incident happened late summer of '21. My nightly 24/7 c-store stop for coffee & ... on my way home was still posting signs about "masks required" at the time. I chose not to comply with that request. Eventually, a cashier mentioned it to me. I said two things: "I know you are telling me this because your boss has asked you to do so;" and "Please tell them this for me: Any time he doesn't want my business, simply say so and I will gladly leave." That was the last I heard of the matter.
That job also sharpened my awareness of how insidious a 2.5% vig on every transaction is; I use cash whenever possible, for that and a few other reasons, none of which are disdain for advancing technology.
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The Little Arrow That Could
This, 100%.
I think if people saw the data available for purchase by major data vendors, they would understand why installing lots of apps on your phone and clicking 'YES' on every EULA form is a really bad idea. You should actually be relieved when you're paying for an app, since the provider will be less motivated to "monetize" the user data they're sitting on and sell it to whoever wants it for a few bucks.
As for the data... everything from seeing credit card swipes at specific locations you visit, your email receipts showing what you buy, foot traffic GPS from your phone show where you go (usually with your "home" geofenced algorithmically and removed, except when its not), URLs you visit from your browser, and specific healthcare billing data (with PII "removed"... *scoffs). There's a pretty big digital footprint we leave behind, and there's money to be made in gathering those details and selling it to the right customer.
I've seen and used the data first hand. At investment firms we only care about looking at aggregate trends. Any individual/account level is a bit of a nuisance.
But you can imagine how data showing individual level stuff like that being purchased by someone with other intentions can and does get used for unsavory purposes.
I personally know one super-uber privacy focused guy who works at one of the biggest online data brokers. He is super-uber privacy focused specifically because of the work he does, which he calls "super greasy". But they pay him a couple hundred thousand bucks as an engineer in a low COLA area so he's content to do what he does. But everything he runs in his own personal tech stack is super privacy optimized because of what he sees at his job lol.
So it's something to think about the next time you see a free weather app available on Play Store or AppStore lol.
My sense of many such "Apps" is that the "app" does nothing for me that a browser can't do; but leaves me open to funneling TikTok-like personal data visibility to the app sponsor and who knows whom else.
Shepherd
Final Approach
When I first started at IBM, I used to repair those.
If you are paying 2.5% for CP transactions, you're not trying very hard.
flyingcheesehead
Taxi to Parking
Interesting.
You see, here, we have Kwik Trip. In Iowa it's Kwik Star because Quik Trip got there first. Having been a truck driver and seen all of the various chains around the country, Kwik Trip is my favorite for many reasons, and they are VERY popular here in WI, MN, and IA where they do business.
I don't know that I've ever seen anyone use cash there... But they do have a loyalty card that you can put into a phone wallet. It seems like most people still just do plain old plastic cards. For the most part, the only people I see using cash anywhere any more tend to be, um, a bit more "wise" and "lacking of hair color".
I'll have to try paying cash there just to see if they're any good at counting change.
They do a very good job at hiring people, one of the things that makes them so popular is that they have very friendly staff.This reminded me of Robinhood. They're still operating, but there was a big stink when they suddenly shut off trading during the Gamestop short squeeze.
Looks like a punch card wrapped around a drum? Google says it's an IBM 029 keypunch.
As a former analytics consultant, I've seen... A lot of data. And most companies aren't particularly concerned with privacy. "Data governance" is a popular buzzword, but it also costs money, so most companies just throw it all into a database and if you have access to anything you have access to everything.
Personally, I don't mind if a company knows things about me anonymously. I know that they're going to use data on my buying habits to decide what products to sell, and that's OK because it benefits me (as long as other people like the same things I do). That aforementioned Kwik Trip card may have led to KT building newer, more convenient locations as in the 10+ years since I bought my house they've opened up three new locations that have gotten progressively closer to my house.
When they start to want my personal info, though... That's where I draw the line. I've seen too many instances of customer data just sitting in a wide open database. As such, I never "register" the cards. The places that require registration (I'm looking at you, Panera), I simply don't use their card, and that means I'm pretty much not going to give them my money.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
QTs around here are typically swamped in the mornings with blue collar types getting ready for the day, mixed with white collar types getting coffee, mixed with day laborers getting ice for coolers and their breakfast. At lunch a lot of those same folks or landscaping crews will hang out in the shade during their breaks. It’s an interesting mix of people and because they know the cashiers get them out in a hurry, everyone is polite and holds the doors open for everyone else. I would say it’s most common at the QT I mainly use, but it seems similar at every one I’ve been in. It’s really remarkable.Interesting.
You see, here, we have Kwik Trip. In Iowa it's Kwik Star because Quik Trip got there first. Having been a truck driver and seen all of the various chains around the country, Kwik Trip is my favorite for many reasons, and they are VERY popular here in WI, MN, and IA where they do business.
I don't know that I've ever seen anyone use cash there... But they do have a loyalty card that you can put into a phone wallet. It seems like most people still just do plain old plastic cards. For the most part, the only people I see using cash anywhere any more tend to be, um, a bit more "wise" and "lacking of hair color".
I'll have to try paying cash there just to see if they're any good at counting change.
This reminded me of Robinhood. They're still operating, but there was a big stink when they suddenly shut off trading during the Gamestop short squeeze.
Looks like a punch card wrapped around a drum? Google says it's an IBM 029 keypunch.
As a former analytics consultant, I've seen... A lot of data. And most companies aren't particularly concerned with privacy. "Data governance" is a popular buzzword, but it also costs money, so most companies just throw it all into a database and if you have access to anything you have access to everything.
Personally, I don't mind if a company knows things about me anonymously. I know that they're going to use data on my buying habits to decide what products to sell, and that's OK because it benefits me (as long as other people like the same things I do). That aforementioned Kwik Trip card may have led to KT building newer, more convenient locations as in the 10+ years since I bought my house they've opened up three new locations that have gotten progressively closer to my house.
When they start to want my personal info, though... That's where I draw the line. I've seen too many instances of customer data just sitting in a wide open database. As such, I never "register" the cards. The places that require registration (I'm looking at you, Panera), I simply don't use their card, and that means I'm pretty much not going to give them my money.
flyingcheesehead
Taxi to Parking
Sounds exactly like KT.
FWIW, their card transactions take only a few seconds longer than I'd be there anyway... And they are VERY good at getting people out the door "Kwik". Maybe half or more of the staff on duty at any given time is wearing a radio with one earpiece, and if it's slow with one cashier and all of a sudden a line starts to form, they'll key the mic and say "all hands on deck" and half a dozen cashiers materialize at the registers in less than 30 seconds, the line vanishes, and everyone goes back to what they were doing before.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
I had to look up KT and QT. Completely unrelated. But it sure sounds like you get the same experience at the cash register.
Whenever I feel like “kids these days” don’t have anything to offer, I get to feeling better whenever I go to Culver’s, Chick-Fil-A, and QT and deal with their employees.
DaleB
Final Approach
I never did much punch-card stuff, other than 2540s, 2501s, the odd other thing here and there. But I do have a 1600 bit 4-wire core memory card from a 2821 hanging on my wall. Suspect it still has a print train image or something stored on it.