How does a new bank card know whether you have entered your pin once to then activate contactless payments? And how did all bank cards know when the contactless limit on card went up from £30 to £45 in the UK?

Question

A customer asked me this at work and I didn’t know the answer!

In: Technology

Answer 1

The limit is in the terminal, not the card. It is set (at least here in Canada) by the merchant. Typically it is $200 here but places with higher fraud rates or typically smaller purchases might have lower limits or disable tap entirely.