Did my debit card not work because I had disinfected it?

That shouldn’t have made a difference. If you used the chip, your personal data is stored in the integrated circuit that’s part of the chip. If you swiped the card, the reader looks at the magnetic fields stored under the stripe.

So cleaning, itself wouldn’t have hurt anything, unless somehow you scratched the magnetic strip.

I use the chip.

If it was the “Chip” it maybe the machine, I go to one store and will not use Check-out #4 because I have to put the card in three times and than use the magnetic strip.

EDIT: were you able to use the magnetic strip??

I didn’t try. I switched to my credit card which it tool.

https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/how-to-clean-your-credit-card/

“While disinfecting a card could erase the COVID-19 virus, Thomas questions whether vigorous cleaning might hinder a card’s functionality.
That could include damage to a card’s chip or magnetic stripe.”

Suggests using the “tap and go” feature instead.

I have a couple of cards and only one has “tap and go”. Thinking about activating Samsung Pay on my mobile, that is a “tap and go”.

Yeah – I don’t have a tap and go either. Could set up Apple Pay I guess but I’ve been a little reluctant to.

I use tap and pay from my phone. I have read it’s actually safer than using a card with a chip. Please, don’t ask me where I read that.

I have been using Apple Pay as much as possible; my phone, my cards, my fingers don’t touch anything other than my phone.

@janbb If you use your debit card for recurring purchases, don’t cancel it yet, because the card numbers are still good. Wait until you have recurring bills paid on a different card, then get a new one from the bank.

A lot of my friends claim that they disinfect their card every time they use it & it hasn’t affected any of theirs. It was probably the reader & not your card. One of my cards has a problem at the same store just about every other time I use it there. I rub the chip on my skirt & put the card back in & so far it has always read after cleaning it. Just guessing, the chip might get a piece of lint or dust on it & causes the reader to misread. This particular card & this particular store have been doing this since before China had Covid so I hadn’t disinfected it when it happened.

I would think that if disinfecting the card would cause it to stop working that the banks would be saying to stop disinfecting them to keep people from having the probem

@janbb: Perhaps there was something wrong with the one machine at the store. Bring it to another store and see if it works. It may. I was shopping during the holidays and my card didn’t work at an expensive department store, and then they tried it in another machine and it worked fine.

@jca2 Sure. That is my plan before i do anything else. But my credit card did work in that machine,

I just finished loading my “Credit Card” on Samsung Pay. Looks like it will work on NFC systems it might work on Square and magnetic strip readers too.

Failure to read the chip is not rare in my experience. Maybe once a month or two I encounter machines that won’t read the chip and I have to swipe or pay cash.

Funny – because of the epidemic I set up Google Pay with my debit card and phone so I could go touch-free. The sale still required entering my PIN on the keypad. So much for the no-touch future.

@Call_Me_Jay my PIN is loaded on Smartwatch or Mobile. No touch !

Uh oh. I just disinfected and washed my debit card. Just saw this post. :(

@mazingerz88 Haven’t tried it anywhere else yet so I don’t know if that was why or not.

Update: It worked in CVS yesterday.