Paying with a little plastic card has become common in Austria over the last years. The relationship between owners and their cards is an intensive one. Some people don’t trust them, some people thrust all their worth on them. Some carry them in special briefcases, some in the backpocket of their jeans. Where they are bound to be bent and then won’t work anymore. Which brings us to the main theme of today’s post.

More and more often paying with your little card doesn’t work.

People have come up with various tricks and measures to get the machine-card-relationship to work. Rubbing the card on their jackets, entering the card quickly then releasing slowly or vice versa, and whatnot. All of that usually helps as much as spiking a voodoo doll or doing a little ritual dance.

First, if it is an Austrian card, then the machines don’t read the brownish magnetic stripe but the chip in the card. So there is no use cleaning the stripe. The chip can be dirty, but should be cleaned with a dry cloth. Since it is very vulnerable to electricity and liquids cleaning by rubbing against cloth (electrostatic charging!) or spitting on it probably destroys the chip.

Secondly, usually it is not the card that isn’t working but the machine. Now with ATMs the operators have to clean the machines at least once a week. For operators of those blue pay machines, shops etc., they don’t have to clean them. And if they get dirty, as they will, they don’t work anymore. Therefore it is probably a good idea to carry some cash with you as well. Which again is completely against the idea of carrying a card. But that’s life.