Its nice because it makes payments significantly faster especially for small transactions.

When your in a busy shop getting lunch, or a bar, it saves a significant amount of time and effort.

If speed was a priority at restaurants, nobody would ever eat anything but McDonalds. Apparently speed is not the highest priority for food, at least for most people most of the time.

At more traditional retail, the cost of going to Target retail store is fifteen minutes rounding up the kids, sitting in the car for thirty minutes round trip, wandering thru parking lots and aisles for a half hour, waiting in line fifteen minutes, after ninety minutes of time a couple seconds at payment are a rounding error. If I'm in a hurry and not willing to invest ninety minutes to buy a frying pan, I can pull my phone out and amazon can deliver it with an investment of perhaps three minutes.

Contactless solves A problem, unfortunately its the wrong problem.

It does save you some time, but is this time worth the security downgrade?

I guess it is up to each person to answer this question.

The main issue I have with this is that no one gave me a choice : I received my card with this feature turned on and absolutely no way to have a card without it (I asked at the bank).

I changed banks about things like this. My bank once thought that i have to have Online Banking with my account, while all i wanted (and still do) is absolutely no remote access except with the debit card. They also told me that their eTan is much safer than the classic Tan system via post so they stopped it.

I really think less is more when it goes about the safety of my money.

Honestly i have the few extra seconds. My security and peace are fully worth that.

Also we have fingerprint scanners on android now. So contactless plus verification is not a issue at all.

Contactless without verification is just lazy. There is really nothing to argue.

When it comes to my money, i want safe. not convenient.

The implementation of these is deliberately intended to make it less effort for small transactions. The risk of fraud is relatively low, the scope limited, and the impact minimal.

Contactless providers have obviously made the decision that the risk of fraud and the associated costs will be lower than the additional revenue received be encouraging people to use contactless cards more. In contrast to being negligent and stupid, it's actually pretty thoroughly thought-out.

And who pays for the fraud? The consumer. Thats already a huge issue with credit cards, if this now gets normal as well...

I am so glad nobody looks strange in my country when you pay with cash. Most people do, its efficient, depending on the currency fast enough, has privacy in mind and is as safe as myself.

Only in an indirect sense. AFAIK all UK banks will reimburse any fraudulent transactions; they've decided that the increased use is worth more than the costs of fraudulent transactions.

Obviously the public feels there is a benefit using contactless cards over cash, or we wouldn't be using them.

And that's why the value of the transaction is limited