This is one of the mysteries of contactless payment: it is not always possible to pay without typing your confidential code, even for small sums. Does this come from your bank or your bank card?
“Payment refused”. Two words that haunt the spirits when switching to the checkout. But no more embarrassment, it has almost become common. In question: contactless payment. 90% of French people use it but must often deal with its vagaries … which are not really. When the machine asks to insert your card after a refusal of contactless, it is not due to chance!
All French people know it: to pay without having to type your secret code, the amount must not exceed € 50. On the other hand, very few know the other rules that exist.
It is not possible to chain as many contactless as desired payments, a question of security. But banks do not explain it and the regulations are difficult to find. The general framework is easy: if a contactless payment of less than € 50 is refused to you, it is because you have either exceeded a cumulative purchasing ceiling, or made too many transactions without inserting your card.
However, not all banks apply the same rules. This is when you have to insert your bank card into the TPE to pay, even below 50 €:
- Postal bank : exceeding the € 80 ceiling of cumulative purchases, per day
- Bnp : 5 consecutive contactless payments per day, whatever the total amount
- Cic : exceeding the 100 € cumulative purchases ceiling, per day
- Crédit Agricole : 5 consecutive contactless payments per day, whatever the total amount
- Mutual credit : exceeding the 100 € cumulative purchases ceiling, per day
The other banks remained opaque on the subject. There Popular bank and the Caisse d’Epargne responded to Liner that these are “our little manufacturing secrets.” “I will not give you the algorithms” which decide when you have to type its secret code, took us back Yves Tyrode, Director General Digital & Payments at BPCE. For its part, the Société Générale did not follow up on our request for information.
More generally, banks are required to apply the regulations decided by the European Union: as soon as the cumulative amount of the last contactless purchases exceeds € 150 or that more than 5 payments without contacts have been chained, the confidential code must be requested. Beyond these principles, all say that random checks can, in addition, be carried out. The CB code can therefore be requested at any time.