With the implants now reaching our porches, I wonder how many other peeps have it in their hands in UK.
Specifically how many have actually attempted using it on any POS already.
I’m asking mainly because I’ve been walking around with one tonight and at most I could get was a couple of “please present your card again” and a single “card reader error” from POS at Tesco and nothing at all from Sainsbury’s
Tomorrow I plan on going better prepared and try to snatch some pics of the POS as well (security was already coming my way when I finally got the “reader error” screen)
So my question is mostly to figure out if other peeps are having better luck than I am or if there is some type of POS I should look for/avoid here in UK.
On the side…
I also can’t read the implant with any app (iCard inclusive), but I believe that’s as per design, so not concerned here.
What is interesting is… 2 of my credit cards are also “silent” (they can’t be read by apps), but they can’t be read by passive readers either (such as a kbr). Yet the Walletmor implant picks up on passive readers. That is interesting…
It’s also worth noting about the chip types, although I’m not sure about this one being a coincidence or a rule…
Scanning 3 British bank cards, I got all 3 with 8 digit IDs.
Scanning 2 foreigner bank cards I got both with 14 digit IDs.
Scanning Walletmor I got a 14 digit ID.
I would bet on coincidence more than anything here, but the error I got with the Waletmor on the POS tonight is the same error I got once when using one of those 14 digit foreign cards… so worth sharing?
Going from interesting to outright positive, now…
Performance seems to be much better than I expected from the “new format antenna” when testing it against regular readers. It picks up on a kbr almost as easily as my DF2.
The size is also a great positive surprise! Even smaller and thinner than expected. Perfect for finger placements!
Do you think that this is like those English shops that used to refuse to accept Scottish pound notes back in the 1980s? We don’t accept that foreign payment type here!
back in the 80s?
I’m fairly sure I got scottish bills rejected in quite a fair share of off-licenses as of last year! (I mean, pre-covid. now most places are card-only anyway)
To which the response always came “I think you’ll find that’s legal tender pal!” I think they secretly liked it.
I worked in a boozer and 1 of the lasses flat out refused to accept Scottish money, to the point the punter was getting pretty riled up about it and telling her it’s"not fucking monopoly money" and to accept it.
Not sure if she hated the jocks or was just a total moron tbh
I lived in Liverpool and Warrington 1987 - 1991. I remember having issues then. I lived in Middlesbrough 1995-1999 and don’t remember any issues there.
I’ve been living in Oregon since late 1999. They just don’t accept Sterling here at all.
Every place is meant to accept Scottish bills in UK now (since a long while ago), but some still refuse just because you need to do a separate money run to deal with those, if you’re a business, and way too many managers are too lazy to do that.
The signs were always hand written and I ignored them depending on what was in my wallet. I would rather keep the Scottish notes than those chunky coins.
This bit. Sounds like the expectations were low. If I recall correctly you had some issues with the flexMN so I didn’t know if you had just soured on the new antennas.
My only other experience with such antenna format was the FlexMN, and the performance of that implant renders it unusable for my case.
Although I did say that my bet is that the issues are mostly on the MN chip itself, not blaming the new antenna.
Running some comparisons with a passive reader though, the new PCB antenna seems great, but isn’t as great as my DF2 (which I suspect is overperformant).
That said coming back ontopic:
I just missed a train because I Lost track of time trying to get the Walletmor implant to read from a Co-Op POS.
I got no reaction at all.
My DF2 managed to get a beep.
My phone managed to trigger an “error reading the card” Walletmor… Nothing at all.
Foreign Credit card… Nothing at all.
I tried filming discretely with the phone on my jacket pocket, but ended up with a bunch of videos from the bags on the side stall …
After spending the last few days in a series of failed attempts I think I’m getting the gist of it.
On the fixed POS from most supermarkets I just can’t get any reaction at all to the implant.
On some of those POS where you can pull the machine closer I sometimes can get a beep or two (even without having to move it), And some rare occasions I manage to get an actual error being thrown. but nothing coming even close to an accepted payment.
The most worrying of these errors was one time that the terminal asked me to insert the chip.
(That is something that UK terminals tend to do with bank cards: ever X amount of swipes will make a terminal request you to insert the card to use pin and chip)
Also worth noting that it’s far easier to get those POS to beep for my DF2 than for this Walletmor.
So I decided to go to my local Piercing shop where I would have some more freedom to fiddle about.
After quite some time messing with the reader I managed to get a very peculiar error a couple of times:
“Present one card only”
There was no other card nearby.
My phone had nfc off.
And then… “Authorising, please wait”!
It did took us an agonising almost 2 minutes for the terminal to return “accepted”. but it did!
And here’s a short vid of the error and success!
I’m getting more convinced to strap it to my finger to be able to make some more realistic tests.
Also, I believe, but I stand to be corrected by @Satur9 , these antennas are tuned to be beneath the skin rather than in a chlorohex solution in a vial.
I don’t believe there will be much difference, but there will be some.
I am prepared to eat my hat
Also, again minor, but it all adds up, The distance of the flex from the reader in your test rig, will likely be larger than when under the skin, and sometimes those millimeters really count
Just some considerations for ya, but I think you may already be aware
Don’t think you’ll need to, because I also think you are perfectly correct there!
Yet…
…I definitely am.
Hence why I made this thread specifically about UK.
I do travel a lot through europe, and there are a few peculiarities I notice mostly within UK:
One being that in quite a few shops they tend to add a thick acrylic or plastic film around / over the reader.
This is thicker than the plastic of the Vial.
In other POS around here they do have a touch screen (one of the dumbest Ideas ever, but does happen), so you cannot let your skin touch the reader or it cancels the sale.
That one isn’t soooo common, but common enough for it to be a concern for me.
Therefore the “valuable mm’s” in your picture become a very good measure of how viable would this be.
Another of my personal concerns has to do with “I don’t want to have to give the reader a secret handshake”. Therefore the angling caused by the suspension of the implant should be a good test about how much fiddly is this implant to pair up with the readers we have here.
Another factor that led me to consider running the first battery of tests with Walletmor within the sealed tube is the interaction between my DF2 and those POS.
I can make them beep with the DF almost perpendicular to them, and sometimes almost a full inch away from it. These are conditions even worst than the tube.
That’s one of the things which actually worry me the most.
If I need to rub my skin against the reader… that means it’s not viable for my use case (especially counting how many touch screen readers I found here)
Interesting to read, I can’t get a read off my Walletmor from a phone based app but can from my KBR.
I’m implanting this week as as good as I am I can’t quite do the insertion with my left hand and no free hand so one of my buddies is gonna jam it in for me.
Looking forward to trying it out in the wild once the swelling has gone down…
How are you getting on with this?
I’m very tempted by walletmor but, as most of my income seems to go to tesco or petrol stations, I would want it to work for these places. We seem to have a great many different readers in the UK.
Where did you get it installed? Was it a needle install (I mean those big needle things for flexes) ? Any stitches?
I’m also a little reluctant due to the lack of available local anaesthetic in our country. The NExT install was a bearable sting but I’m a bit of a puss when it comes to the thought of pain and I don’t much fancy the idea of scalpels, poking around and stitches without a bit of anaesthetic.
Edit - have you had it installed yet? Sorry I didn’t pick up that you were testing it pre-installation.
