Too scared to pay with smart technology

New technology is making it easier to pay for things, but some are frightened to use it.

 

Are you scared of spiders? You are more likely to be frightened by banking with your mobile phone, a new survey has shown. The Payments Council, a trade body for credit card and banking companies, says that a quarter of us are actively avoiding new ways to pay due to security fears – a condition that it has dubbed ''paynuphobia’’.

But are paynuphobes’ fears really groundless? Questions have been asked about the safety of so-called contactless cards, which take payment without a Pin being entered, while some mobile phone banking apps have been dogged by glitches. So here is a guide to your safety and rights, as well as the advantages of using new payment technology.

Contactless cards

You may have a contactless payment card without even knowing it. The technology has been around for a few years, and if your card has the technology it will show a symbol that resembles four brackets in a row getting gradually larger. There are now over 30 million of these cards in the UK, and they let you pay for items under £20 without having to enter a Pin number.

However, there has been recent chatter about security flaws. Martin Emms, a security expert from Newcastle University, has demonstrated that by holding a phone over someone’s wallet, a thief could download their security details – enough to make purchases on websites such as Amazon.