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You need an active internet connection to pay via QR.

NFC (EMV) works offline.

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Got it, that's a good point! It's so much not an issue where I live that I hadn't realised :-). But it is an issue nonetheless.
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It's regularly unreliable here, because it's reliant on a bank app which in turn is reliant on an internet connection, and banks here are kind of shit.

It's pretty common here that people will be told they need to turn off an otherwise working Wifi connection when facing problems because bank apps will often just not work properly on wifi.

But as I said, even without that, the convenience level is ridiculously different. It's arguably quicker to open your wallet and use a debit card with an NFC chip than it is to use QR codes, before we even talk about the convenience of watch/phone payments using NFC.

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> It's regularly unreliable here, because it's reliant on a bank app which in turn is reliant on an internet connection

Got it, that's a fair point!

> But as I said, even without that, the convenience level is ridiculously different. It's arguably quicker to open your wallet and use a debit card with an NFC chip than it is to use QR codes

This part sounds like those people who use a different unit system than I do and explain to me how my unit system is objectively more inconvenient than theirs. To which I answer: "I think I know better than you what is more convenient for me, given that I use it everyday" :-).

I use QR codes instead of opening my wallet, which kind of hints towards the former being more convenient than the latter for me. And for the millions of people who also do that.

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Did you miss the part where I said I use both?

I'm not saying "yours" is less convenient. I'm saying the one you and I both use regularly is less convenient than anything NFC based, which I also use semi-regularly.

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I'm confused. You say:

> It's arguably quicker to open your wallet and use a debit card with an NFC chip than it is to use QR codes

So I assume that even though QR codes are available where you live, you use your debit card with an NFC chip because it is quicker than using QR codes...

Anyway, the important part is that NFC doesn't require an internet connection, and I had missed that. Now I wonder why a QR code couldn't work without an internet connection just the same. I'll have to look into that!

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> So I assume that even though QR codes are available where you live, you use your debit card with an NFC chip because it is quicker than using QR codes...

Yes, I generally use my card rather than than QR unless the shop doesn't take cards, doesn't have a paywave/etc-enabled card reader, the card reader is broken, the sales person doesn't know how to use it, or the sales person insists I give them my card and PIN to pay (none of those are hypotheticals, I've experienced all of those first hand, some of them quite repeatedly).

> Now I wonder why a QR code couldn't work without an internet connection just the same.

Because a QR code is just a short piece of information to tell your banking app who to send funds to - it's like putting a mailto: link on a website rather than asking people to re-type your email address to contact you.

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Oh right, of course the phone has to send information back to the terminal, which NFC does but not the QR code. Hence the internet connection.
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