So Paywave came out some time ago and i had it on my credit card, but i didn’t really use it, rather favouring the old sign method. I eventually came around to it and it was pretty cool. Got me out of places a lot of quicker and depsite the press around it, it is still pretty damn secure as long as you don’t use it on dodgy places etc etc – but there is risk with pretty much anything.
I didn’t mind it until i started having to catch taxi’s more and more for work. I was given a plastic cabcharge card (rather than those annoying paper ones) which doesn’t have a magnetic strip on it, either chip or contactless.
Nothing against taxi drivers they are great people, but guys, please pay more attention on your training lessons. When i get the card out, they all reach for it to take it off me to put it through the machine themselves, which is fine. It’s their car their rules. More and more i am seeing them take the card, punch the data in and then wave it around. Upside down, back to front, up and down just every way. Last night, he held it by the chip came in from above and waved it around. After it timed out, started complaing how crap it was and slow and how it always did this. He ran it through again, wouldnt work, took it and inserted the chip, left it there for not even 2 seconds, then pulled it out and waved it again. It was on the third attempt i asked if i could give it a go. Held it where the chip was over the reader (as clearly marked on the reader) and i bet you could never guess what happened. It worked! How funny is that!
My thoughts overall
I like it, putting aside the security implications and just looking at userbility, its clear that taxi drivers need some more info on how to use these things
Some praise but
I would like to say thank you to 10 or so drivers I’ve had in the last 3 months who have done this correctly first go, but on average I’ve caught 3 taxis return trips per week for the last 3 months, and 10 in that time, is not a lot 🙁
