Chase's blink Card: A Denver Field Test Report

Part I – blink is coming !

It's been two weeks since I first got a 6x9 postcard telling me that I would receive a Chase blink card…and alerting me to watch my mail. About 10 days later, my blink card arrived, in a typical card mailer, a completely blank envelope that looked dangerously close to junk mail. But, I was watching for my blink card, so I rescued it from a pile of similar looking junk and started my blink experiences. There has been a lot in the press, particularly the financial and card press about this card, so I’ve decided to share my experiences related to this new contactless credit card.

The card mailer seemed a bit schizophrenic about the message it was delivering. The card carrier itself seemed to be all about ‘Bank One is now Chase…Here’s your new replacement Chase card with blink’, and filled out its space assuring me this card had the same terms, features, and benefits of my Bank One card. Hmmm, not much about blink there. Two other enclosures focused on blink. An 8 1/2 x 11 flyer declared “A new name. A new card. A faster way to pay. Your new Chase card replaces” … .yes, yes, yes…but the side bar on this piece did show in simple diagrams the intended use of the blink feature: “hold your card up to the special card reader; watch for the series of lights and listen for the tone; remove your card and you’re on your way.” Thankfully, there was also a link to www.chaseblink.com. A third insert, a 7x14 quadra-fold brochure showed more about how to use the card, the logos of the merchants who are participating in the initial rollout. The blink card has its own logo, a stylized circuitry design in an octagon with a rainbow color wash, which is printed in a tiny version in the center of the card. The word ‘blink’ does not appear on the card, nor is there is any actual peek of metal to let you know there is a chip in the card at all.

If you are interested in branding and logos, you might observe that the lead lines and tag lines on each of the three pieces of the material in the mailer were different. The card itself had no strong branding, just the very small octagon image in the center of the card. Chase doesn’t seem to be sure what tag-phrase they will really promote this with. There was only one references to the ‘paypass’ acceptance mark and an unnamed chime-symbol mark, and they appeared to be last minute additions on the back of the promotion piece mentioning that these marks might appear on the back of the card, without indicating what that might mean to the cardholder.

For the mailer, the marketing design seemed a bit disjointed and less than memorable. But before I succumb to sounding too harsh, let’s acknowledge that this is a test market, not the national rollout, and Chase may well be testing a number of different messages, symbols, and formats for presentation. The web-site introduction to the card is actually quite good. It coaxes you into clicking through several repetitions of a simple graphic demonstration of using the card and uses its rollout merchants’ product shots and logos to represent your simulated purchases. If all their materials had the thoughtfulness and consistency of this site, I might have been more excited when I opened the card mailer. There are also a number of pieces on the website that helped me understand what Chase was aiming for and what to expect. On the website there is a press release and a faq section which seem more designed for reporters, and even folks who know a bit about payment systems, than for the average card recipient.

The average card customer, one who receives this card and does not look at the web-site, may never exercise the blink feature, unless the feature becomes so ubiquitous that they actually witness another customer use it and decide to give it a whirl. But let’s proceed with looking at the site and look for some near-by establishment where we can try this card ! Well, here the web-site had a shortcoming in that it asks you to enter your zip code, in conjunction with the merchant (ie 7-Eleven, Arby’s, Walgreens, KFC, or Regal Entertainment). In my zip code, I got nothing, not a single location ready to take my blink card at the special reader. I tried the zip code for my office in the center of downtown. All I got there were two Arby’s at the outskirts of greater downtown. Determined, and trying to do what a consumer would do, I called the 800 number on the back of the card. Chase has pretty good customer service representatives, but they admitted that they had no list of locations and no way to get one. They just couldn’t help.

Armed with a zip-code map of Denver, I finally hammered the information out the hard way. I entered a zip code and went through the merchant list to see if anything popped up. After about 60 entries, I had what I believe is the entire list of merchant locations in Denver so far : two Arby’s and 15 7-Elevens !! I doubt any card holder who isn’t pathologically interested in payment systems would ever get this far.

Chase materials state that they will be continually rolling out locations over the coming months. Admittedly, these are the very early days of the rollout. However, there will have to be a lot of acceptance locations, and Chase will need to promote card usage more aggressively, and then hope this catches on either through stronger promotion or through the experience of cardholders watching someone else use the card. Given what I experienced today in trying to simply find a place to use the new blink feature, usage is bound to be rare for now.

The press release says there are 500,000 cards being sent out in Colorado. The target merchants seem to be merchants where ‘speed and convenience are important to consumers’. The faq implies that both signatures and receipts are optional, apparently at the choice of the merchant. It appears that the key objective of the card is to speed customers through lines.

So branding of acceptance locations and optional signatures and receipts will be key things to watch for as I go out and experience ‘blink’.

Part II – Let’s go shopping !

So, having extracted the locations of some 7-Elevens not too far from home (but not in my zip-code), I set off with my Chase blink card, prepared to be patient and friendly, and try the new feature. I went to 3 locations, which may be as much as 20% of the currently installed locations in Denver. My first observation as I entered each store : no signage, and no indication that the Chase blink card could be used. I did, however, spot a device near the register of each store that looked similar enough to the device pictured on the web-site that I felt sure I had located one of the elusive outlets. Gathering an enviable armful of sodas, candy, and tissues, I approached the checkout person.

‘Can I use my blink card here ?’ …. Blank, not blink, faces. ‘You know that card you just wave, isn’t that the terminal for it ?’

A side note : Each 7-Eleven had two clerks, one a teenager and one older adult. The teenagers were oblivious and just called for help. The adults all knew what I was talking about. Is this a product of meager training for summer hires, or some other sociological observation ?

At the first store, the clerk in the know, said, ‘yes, but that’s for credit cards.’ When I replied I had one, and waved it in the air, she said ‘does it have a chip on it ?’. When I said yes, one eyebrow arched suspiciously. She hit a key on the register and left me to the teenager. Fortunately the younger clerk was interested in what was going on, and allowed me to check out one item at a time so I could experiment with distance of the card from the reader, interference from an RFID pass card in my wallet, and position of the card. There is good news and bad news here. The good news is what the card doesn’t do. The bad news is back to Chase…more on that later.

The card functioned just fine when I passed it in front of the reader, almost touching it, just as the image on the web-site instructed me. Accepted !! Unfortunately, 7-Eleven is sticking with the rest of the traditional terminal functions for now. I had to indicate ‘credit’ or ‘debit’ using a stylus on the old card swipe, and sign on the screen. I got a receipt.

The next several attempts at using the card at distances of 6 inches, then 3 inches both failed. That’s probably good news for the card technology folks, since that will combat some of the horror stories about inadvertent pilfering of information when the card has not actually been presented. Trying again at less than 1 inch, the card worked, but Chase declined the transaction. Even more interesting, when we then completed the very same sale with a card magnetic stripe swipe, the transaction was accepted. I suspect Chase has some work to do on their risk prevention systems and the parameters they have set. I decided to try letting some minutes pass, and left to drive to the next location before trying to use the card again.

Undaunted, I entered the second 7-Eleven, spotted the terminal, and gathered another soda, candy bar, and box of tissue. Approaching the clerk, I asked again if I could use the blink card and got the exact same reaction as the previous store. Pointing at the terminal, and indicating that I wanted to use it, I got this ominous reply…’oh we haven’t been introduced to that yet..I don’t think we’re supposed to use that yet and we don’t know how anyway’. Well, perhaps I could have showed them, but I just paid for my soda in cash and left.

The third experience was very similar to the first one. The clerks said nobody had used the terminal before, but they had been trained. I started waving my card at 6 inches (nothing), 3 inches (nothing), and then closer, when the terminal beeped indicating it had read the card. But alas, my friends at Chase were now sure that I was a rampaging criminal spending down this card $2 at a time and the transaction was declined. I assured the clerks that this was OK, that I was actually a secret shopper testing the system, thanked them for their help, and left.

It seemed clear there was no use in continuing my search for an easy blink transaction on this day. I returned home to call Chase, whose fraud department patiently explained how fraud control programs look for high value transactions and too frequent usage. They have promised to re-activate my card.

One other observation from this experience was that the terminals used to read the cards are marked nicely. They have a decal set that includes the Visa mark, the MasterCard mark, the paypass mark, and that unnamed chime mark. I could identify them from the image on the Chase website, even though the Chase website does not show any marks on them. The key identification was that they have a black plastic screen that is oval, and the marks confirmed my hunch.

On this first foray into the world of blink, I did not get to test everything I wanted to : using the card from inside my unopened wallet, possible interference from my office pass card in the same wallet, and sideways card waving.

More to come….[End]