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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."

3 of 414 comments (clear)

  1. Good and badGood and badGood and Bad by krray · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I like the convenience idea of it. The magnetic strip in my credit cards are usually destroyed/useless before the card even expires. Between rubbing against other credit cards, contact with the leather, and/or body sweat highly used cards are usually replaced before they ?expire?.

    Where?s the security? I often wonder why the heck credit card purchases don?t require a PIN at the very least. Yeah, we?re all high tech and thumb prints and/or eye scans would be cool, but I?m all for having to know and enter a PIN on each and every purchase.

    I tend to go for EFT payment whenever possible as I do have to enter a PIN. Shoulder surfing or a corrupt security camera guy is always a problem. I?m smart enough to remember a purchase PIN and a ATM/Cash type transaction PIN too. I suppose insurance costs and ?shrink? just isn?t too expensive yet?

    I?d be impressed if there was a thumb reader built into each plastic card I waived around buying all my shit.

    Mobile gas anyone?

    1. Re:Good and badGood and badGood and Bad by the_bahua · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      At the very least, the signature process should be retained.

    2. Re:Good and badGood and badGood and Bad by teknokracy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And then it comes down to the point where you have the fact that the card could just as easily be stolen. No amount of encryption would protect a card from that.