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Contactless Credit Cards

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the don't-crowd-me-in-line dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to his article in EETimes, Visa and Philips are teaming up to introduce a so-called "contactless credit card". Basically it'll work like the proximity cards many of us use for access to our places of work or apartments. You won't need to physically swipe it, simply waving it over a reader is good enough."

4 of 414 comments (clear)

  1. Octopus by ZarathustraThePolarB · · Score: 5, Informative
    In Hong Kong we've had a similar technology for several years now. It's called the Octopus card and virtually everyone in the city has one. It can be used for payment on nearly all public transport and in stores where people make small purchases.

    The EE Times article focuses on the technology is a bit light on details of what the card actually does, so I'm not sure if it is a stored-value card (like Octopus) or actually operates like a credit card. I would be surprised if it's the latter because of concerns about theft etc.

  2. Re:Good and badGood and badGood and Bad by b0r1s · · Score: 5, Informative


    I would be interested to know how they would be able to stop "contactless thieves" in this case. It seems to me that scanners would become available for people to walk around zapping people's funds away from them. One nice thing about the tried and true swipecards is that to charge them, it's very much a physical action.

    Not entirely true. One of the more common credit card scams here in Los Angeles is portable card scanners being carried by waiters in restaurants. As they take the card you've handed them back to scan it for the bill, they scan it in their personal scanner, which records the information for later use.

    There is no meaningful physical location tied to this because you've given your card (intentionally) to someone you have to trust. If you eat at multiple restaurants over the course of a week, there's no easy way to trace the theft back to an individual location.

    --
    Mooniacs for iOS and Android
  3. Re:Good and badGood and badGood and Bad by Jetson · · Score: 5, Informative
    The magnetic strip in my credit cards are usually destroyed/useless before the card even expires.

    My cards usually crack from curvature long before the stripe is demagnetized or worn away. I guess that's what comes from sitting on your wallet all the time.

    FWIW, Esso Canada (gas station chain) has been using keychain-dongles for rapid payment for about a year now. You just hold your keys in front of the coloured box on the pump for a few seconds and it prepares to make the sale exactly the way it would if you stuck your card in the stripe reader. They also put the same dongle-reader at each cash register so you can buy your morning coffee a few seconds faster....

  4. For the naysayers... by SamMichaels · · Score: 5, Informative

    The place where I used to work had these key fobs which worked like that. I thought it'd be cool that we just had to walk next to the door and it'd open it.

    Not.

    Even when directly contacting the sensor with the key fob in my pocket it didn't activate it. It had to be held infront of the device, almost touching it.

    Whatever the range they say, I'm sure you're not going to be able to sniff out the RF signal by just sitting next to someone unless you have some expensive equipment.