Thanks for the update.
To be honest this kind of bumps my anticipation for the card. Does one really need to select between does two every time one uses the chip?
Since it looks like vpay is hardly improving the acceptance, i now really have to reconsider switching to this card (especially since I try to not press buttons on the device…).
@Vinz could tomorrow please clarify this for the customers!
Davon gehe ich auch aus. Ich kenne auch nur eine Karte aus Italien wo man nur das V Pay System in Apple Pay hat. Wäre aber nerdig für uns Techis, von Tomorrow, wenn sie V Pay in Apple Pay bringen würden. Hätte aber vermutlich nicht viel Mehrwert. Da wäre ein Co-badge mit Maestro sinnvoller (was aktuell ja nicht geht, aber es wäre ein geiler Stunt gewesen).
As far as I heard, you only have to select a scheme when you insert the card into a device. So if you don’t want to touch buttons, stay contactless (This is unconfirmed information so maybe someone here who has the card already can clarifiy).
@Stefan First thing is that „application selection“ only occurs when you are using the chip in the chip reader, and not when using contactless/NFC or Google/Apple Pay. Contact chip only! So if you’re waving or tapping the card and not touching the device anyway, then this won’t be a problem.
For NFC remember you will be required to enter a PIN for transactions over €25/€50, and also that under PSD2 rules, you may be required to enter a PIN for occasional low value transactions. Very rarely an NFC transaction might not complete and you are required to use the chip reader.
Thanks for confirming my assumption.
The problem is the limit for contactless payments. Once the limit is reached, you must use chip for payment to reset it. Not a major issue though, just wanted to mention it.
(now for the boring educational bit which can be safely ignored…)
Why would we need to be selecting between „Visa Debit“ and „V PAY“
Account type selection has always been around in payments. You guys might remember using an ATM abroad and getting asked to choose „Checking, Savings or Credit“ to continue the transaction. This is a standard system to allow customers to access various bank accounts from a single card. The account type selection was then transmitted along with the rest of the transaction to issuer bank for processing. Account type selection is independent of chip, NFC or magnetic stripe.
This was mostly at ATM. Some countries, like Sweden even had this at point of sale, and you could chose from Checking or Credit. The Swedish POS devices knew which cards were „local“, and only offered the account type selection for those cards. International cards would never be asked the question.
Roll on chip cards in the mid 90s, and the way cards were identified was changed - not by the colour or pictures, but the technical machine readable data basis of how you knew a Visa card from a Mastercard. The older Bank Identification Number (BIN) method is still used today (starts with a 4 it is Visa, starts 51 to 55 then Mastercard, and so on). With chip cards, Application Identifiers (AIDs) were introduced to make it simple to identify a payment card without needing to know all the banks in the world.
AIDs are machine readable - A0000000031010 - and there are probably only 20 in common use in Europe, while there are maybe 20,000 BINs in common use in Europe. AID allocation is controlled by ISO under ISO7816. (Google some of this, there are plenty of resources). There are more outside Europe.
Historically „debit“ and „credit“ were always quite separate products, even long before chip. Still the credit card schemes wanted to participate in debit transactions, and so you have Visa Electron and Maestro. Those were pure debit products and had distinct rules around their use. (ATM only products like Plus and Cirrus also existed).
You then have the idea that a single card can participate in multiple schemes, like Girocard, Maestro and Cirrus, so the customer can use their card in many more locations, especially internationally, and also at POS and ATM. Prior to chip this was managed by the BIN, and customers knew by the logos on the back of the card.
A single card participating in multiple schemes can have occasions where the card and the device where it’s used have multiple matching schemes - e.g. both Girocard and Maestro. In the mag-stripe world, there would have been an implicit priority controlled by the acquirer, as to what was going to be picked first. More BIN tables that needed to be managed, and the issuer bank had limited control, if any, and the acceptance.
One other item to note is that Visa and Mastercard also wanted to use their extensive „credit card“ network to process debit card transactions - there are no technical limitations - it’s all about business rules. Now you have Visa Credit and Visa Debit, as well as Electron, and Mastercard Credit, Mastercard Debit and Maestro.
From a technical perspective, Visa Credit and Visa Debit are almost the same thing. Commercially they might be different products. The underlying technical standards are mostly the same, and the technical processing is the same. The same applies to Mastercard Credit and Mastercard Debit. The similarities are exposed when I say that A0000000031010 is used to accept Visa Credit and Visa Debit, and A0000000041010 for Mastercard Credit and Mastercard Debit. A POS device accepting A0000000031010 does not know the difference between Credt and Debit, between a Bank of American Visa Credit and a Tomorrow Visa Debit. V PAY is A0000000032020 and Maestro A0000000033060.
An advantage of this system is that you can issue a Debit card and it’s immediately accepted on the whole worldwide credit network with no changes or updates needed.
Participation in local debit schemes like Girocard can be commercially difficult for new entrants (you might need to buy a bank), and so it’s been easier for challenger banks like Tomorrow to issue a Debit card which runs on an international scheme, and use the standard acceptance footprint. Hence N26, Monese, Starling, and Money GO are all Mastercard Debit (A0000000041010), and Tomorrow, Vivid and a few others are Visa Debit (A0000000031010).
Here in Germany, as in the Netherlands (and maybe other countries), there are some challenges to this „acceptance on the whole worldwide credit network“. Many small merchants only want to accept payment methods that are low cost (like cash!) and domestic debit cards. Hence you ended up with a significant number of German merchants that only accept Girocard and do not accept credit cards, because of the higher fees.
POS devices at debit only merchants know nothing about A0000000031010 or A0000000041010 and only prefer to accept transactions from cards that have A00000005945430100 (Girocard) on them. Your N26 does not get accepted at your hairdressers or the local gym.
(here I’m going to speculate a bit). It’s possible that in the past decade, debit only merchants now also accept Maestro (A0000000032010) and VPAY (A0000000032020) in addition to Girocard. From a customer perspective, the majority of German debit cards support girocard, and no-one notices any acceptance issues. My fellow nerds in payments and myself might, but we are in the minority. (end of speculation)
Tomorrow’s update of their card to support both Visa Debit (A0000000031010) and V PAY (A0000000032020), means that any device that supports one or other AID will accept the card. This now includes all the German merchants that previously only accepted „Girocard“.
(this is waaay longer than I expected)…
Now you ask the question, what happens when a merchant device supports both A0000000031010 and A0000000032020, the same as the Tomorrow card! Aha… cardholder application selection.
Back to the chip standards (https://www.emvco.com/emv-technologies/contact/) and the contact chip standards allow for all kinds of „cool“ features. Someone must have let the developers near the draft specifications. Full details of application selection processing are in EMVCo Book 1 Chapter 12. Application Selection.
The relevant section is here in Chapter 12.4
Step 3: If there is more than one mutually supported application, then:
Step 4: When the terminal offers a selection to the cardholder, then:
Except there are no real UX requirements, and so each vendor has done their own thing. And that gives you two blue lines with the same text from which you need to pick one.
This was probably too much for a Saturday morning without coffee.
Thank you so much! Fortunately, I just had an espresso.
How do Apple and Google Pay work? Do these schemes use the same codes you mentioned? Also, AFAIK, they emit a one-time token instead of the card number. Is this (still) correct?
Appel / Google Pay aren’t schemes. They are „mediums“. In simple terms, think of them as a different form factor for a NFC chip card.
I am not aware of any mobile payment implementation with „co badge“ in any market. Apple has implemented a local debit scheme in Australia where users can preselect if they want to use the local scheme (at home) or Visa (abroad), but there’s no app selection during payment.
I expect only Visa to work with Apple / Google Pay with Tomorrow cards at the moment.
Does VPay also work wireless via NFC, does it only work via Chip?
I have a few merchants that only accept Girocard where I shop and I want to try if they accept the new Tomorrow VPay Card.
Both apps on both interfaces:
But Vpay isn’t Girocard! Your changes are higher, but Girocard only merchants (literally) won’t accept Vpay cards.
I have another question… I went to small local bookstore and they accepted NFC cards so I took out my iPhone to pay but the cashier told me: “No, only real cards” How comes that? Is it because they only accept Girocards and there are only a few Girocards that work with Apple Pay so he (correctly) assumed mine wouldn’t work? Or what else could the reason be that they only accept “real” cards.
Few? The number of Girocards issued by Sparkasse is massive.
Out of curiosity: how did you end up paying? Did you use your „real“ Tomorrow card?
That equation isn’t very good. First off, there is only one Girocard supported by Apple Pay. That is the one from the Sparkasse. Secondly, in comparison to other Apple Pay users only a small percentage actually have a Girocard added to the Apple Wallet. Probably about 99% out there have either Visa, Mastercard or AMEX in their Apple Wallet. So yeah, its easier for the Merchant to say „Real cards only!“ before discussing if this is an Girocard or not in the Apple Wallet with the customer.
It is pretty clear in this context, that @LeMart was referring to the people actually having their Girocard from Sparkasse in their Apple Wallet.
I’ve had that in Ireland as well - where the merchant has a perception of funny business when using a phone - that you might be faking the data. It’s a lack of understanding by the merchant of the technology. If I was to try and pay with a fitbit or a watch, they would have similar concerns.
That is actually the interesting part. Does that merchant only support Girocard and was trying to avoid discussions or was he refusing virtual cards for some other reason.
I can’t comment on Apple Pay - I don’t have experience with that specifically nor do I have a device I can test. On Google Pay…
The AID supported by Google Pay for the Tomorrow card is Visa Debit (A0000000031010), and not V PAY.
The „one time token“ you refer to is likely to be the way the card number is tokenised as part of the wallet installation process. The normal Tomorrow Visa Debit card has a BIN of 434975, while the token deployed on the wallet starts 460738. Google/Visa translate the token into the card number so Tomorrow/Solaris can process the transaction normally. The translation is performed by a Token Service Provider (https://www.emvco.com/emv-technologies/payment-tokenisation/). This token is allocated to the wallet on your phone - change phone and re-install the wallet, and you would get a new token. (Tokens look just like card numbers, and are processed like card numbers).
For all NFC and chip transactions, on cards and wallets, there is a dynamic cryptographic value that connects various transaction elements like the amount and the date, and this value is definitely one time use only. (and this is a whole other conversation).
I didn’t want to go into probability calculation, really.
From a merchant’s perspective, it doesn’t help him if the customer then draws a „real“ Visa Debit.
That’s why I asked how @LeMart ended up paying. This would be the easiest way to either confirm or rebut the theory about the merchant’s reason for this „policy“.
I don’t know about that as I then payed cash because I was sure he would accept that.
Finally, a comment on the Sum-Up device I have as a small merchant. It does not support Girocard - my Sparkasse card is accepted as Maestro. Nor does it support V PAY.
@anon71426032 asks a great question - are there Girocard only merchants, not supporting Maestro or V PAY, and I suspect the answer is yes.