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Credit Cards That Think They Are Gadgets
holy_calamity writes "Pittsburgh startup Dynamics Inc has unveiled gadget-like credit cards with buttons, lights and even displays built into the same space as a conventional card. One card has two buttons on the front, which, when pressed, rewrite the data on the card's magnetic stripe, allowing it to act as multiple bank or credit cards in one. Another has several buttons and a display in place of the card's number. Only after entering a PIN is the magnetic stripe populated and the full card number revealed, and after a short time both go blank again for security."
I wonder how long it'll be until somebody builds onboard biometrics into one of these things.
You mean, digital passwords you can never change? Sounds secure...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Why don't they just tie this shit into your cell phone instead? They already have something similar in Japan with swipe phones for the JR line.
Why does every company have to try and put another gadget in your pocket. They should just integrate better with existing gadgets so I don't have to wear fucking cargo pants and have a wallet that is 3 feet big.
Though this seems like a much safer alternative to today's credit/debit cards, although like TFA says, what will this really do for security? How long until a flaw is discovered or it is cracked?
So I'm guessing you wrote that just so you could get in an early comment.
Or are you really concerned about security on an item which literally has all of its information printed right on its surface which you hand to strangers and gets stored in a third party database. Oh and I forgot that most of the printing is actually raised so it can be recorded with a simple piece of paper and a crayon.
You are worried that something could be less secure than THAT? Well I suppose adding a speaker for blind cashiers might be a bit less secure...
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Scammers will love these, they'll find a flaw where they can reprogram any name and card number, swipe a card and clone it.
I wonder how long it'll be until somebody builds onboard biometrics into one of these things.
Screw that, I'm waiting for these guys to port Quake to a credit card.
I know chip&pin isn't perfect, but it'd be a step in the right direction..
I just went on vacation and had no problem with my cards until the end, when someone cloned one of my cards and "swiped" it nearly ten days after I'd last used the card in that particular city.
Curiously the card was never out of my sight. They carried a machine to the table in restaurants and swipe on the spot, as is common in Europe.
Then, when my genius bank thought there might be fraud, they called me on my land line at home. This despite having told them my travel plans and they knew I wouldn't be home for another 24 hours. Since I didn't get back to them soon enough they let the fraudulent charges go through -- one of them for over $2000 -- and I had to deal with it the hard way when I got home.
Cards that will populate the mag-strip with transaction-specific codes each time. So you can type the code in, the guy at the restaurant can pick up the card with your ticket, and swipe it once.
But if he tries to scan the stripe and clone the card, the number he gets is useless, because it is transaction specific.
I would envision each CC being allocated a block of 200 random CC numbers, to be used in sequence, when it is printed, 200 random initial CVV2 numbers, and 1000 random CVV2 offsets in the form of a number between 0 and 999. For each transaction, pick a number, with no number re-used until 199 more transactions have been made.
Each time a number is used, the CVV2 is to be the initial CVV2 number plus the next CVV2 offset, modulo 999. CVV2 offsets are not re-used until 999 more transactions have been made.
Each time a number is used, the CC company can determine it is valid and compute exactly the right CC and CVV2 numbers that should be used by the next 10 transactions.
Unless there is delayed processing involved, they can also know to reject any number other than those 10.
Even if there is delayed transaction processing involved, the CC company can know a code 199 transactions ago is "too old", because there have been transactions made since then that are too old.
There should also be a way to enter a special PIN to generate a 'vendor specific' code that can be used for multiple transactions.
Possibly assigning card users larger pools of numbers, so expiration dates, and dollar limits can be encoded using the CC# and CVV2.
If multiple failures are detected with a CC# (e.g. someone tries to clone one number and try it with multiple CVVs), then that CC# is retired permanently, and the CC company sends the customer a new file to flash their credit card's memory with.
A major corporation that someone I know has worked for used to use what looked like a very thick credit card to log into what I believe was a VPN. You would input a PIN on the front, and it would display a code that would be valid for 30 seconds or so for logging into the VPN that it calculated itself, based on the current time and PIN. I think this card was made by RSA, now I think the same company uses a slightly different system.
This could make a long-time dream come true for me. I use one-time use numbers online but in brick-and-morter transactions (like paying at a restaurant), I still have to give my real credit card number. Perhaps these cards could be made to generate a one-time use number. Then, when I'm paying at the grocery store, they get one number while the pizza place gets a second number. I'm sure there would be some security hurdles to clear but it is a promising development.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Yes. Says it in TFA.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
LOL, just read it when I switched back to finish TFA. Should of searched TFA first before posting. SIGH.
Open Standards Portal
Even if the numbers/strip are obscured without a PIN the finger smudges on the card over the commonly used numbers will make the PIN a trivial matter to guess. What is the point of this security? Would you not call in the card missing/stolen just because it has better security?
Because cell phones are buggy pieces of shit, and I wouldn't trust them with my credit card number and PIN for anything. Especially as they become more and more tied to the web.
This is fractionally more secure than current CCs, and it allows consolidation. As someone who carries his cards loose in his pocket, I only see this development as positive. I hope financial institutions start supporting it.
This is all just a way to make you pay for more and more. Card companies/Banks have to write off fraud, usually, and they hate doing this, so every new card gimmick that comes along will be aimed at making fraud more your problem and less theirs.
But it will also be used to make you pay for everything big companies won't. Let's create an example: Say you walk into Walmart and buy a pair of Calvin Klein jeans. You pay for the Jeans at the checkout. However, Walmart never pays the supplier, Calvin Klein (or the distributor). Thanks to all these shared records, the databases can track everything and one day you get a bill from Calvin Klein for the jeans you purchased at Walmart.
Sounds implausible right? I'm right now fighting with Direct TV for services I purchased through Verizon. Verizon didn't pay Direct TV, so Direct TV is billing me instead, even though I paid Verizon. I never got a Direct TV bill before this one. I was never their customer (directly), I was a Verizon customer. And yet here I am, stuck with the bill.
Trust me, my above example at Walmart may be implausible now, but 5 years from now it'll be commonplace to see the average joes being shafted at both ends by large companies. This card is one more step towards that end.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The most useful change in credit cards would be giving buyers a stack of one time passwords, each one issued to the vendor tied to the specific parties and dollar amount of the transaction, with a short expiration date.
The best way to do it would be a smartphone app that took a token from the vendor, the vendor's ID (another onetime string from a vendor pool of onetime ID#s), encrypted it with the dollar amount and a onetime ID# from the buyer's pool, and sent it over the network to the credit corp. The credit corp would decrypt it and credit the vendor's account. That way no ID info is shared that can be reused.
If they want to make a physical credit card that does those things once connected to a network (like a chipcard), great. Let them put a fingerprint sensor and PIN on the card, along with a display of the available credit remaining and outstanding balance to date. But the one time passwords are by far the most value to deliver to the consumer, and therefore to the vendor, too.
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make install -not war
It's pretty much infinitely more secure than what we have now. Here's my suggestion to improve it further. You enter your pin, and rather than displaying your static credit card number, it displays a static identifier combined with an RSA style changing number. So say, the first 10 digits of the "card number" is a static identifier, then the last 6 digits are a code based on a shared secret between the card and your bank, changing every 5 minutes say. The magnetic strip can also have the same system. So if you enter the pin, then you can either swipe the card or enter the displayed number into a online system. Your card is approved based on the currently active code. 5 minutes later, that code is no longer valid so if someone gets the card database it doesn't matter.
Downside of course is that it will break any kind of storing your card number for monthly payments or stuff like Amazons One-click. It would be very secure though.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I used my chip card at a store once, and they guy was like "Hi Steve!", and I was like "Er hi?", and the merchant was like "Your name is stored on the chip and when I plug it in, your name pops up on my screen!", he seemed so happy I didn't want to tell him that it is also printed on the card as well, that you can see what your eyeballs.
What if the US did away with cash, and instead we started using credits like scifi? Well at first you'd think you'd carry a credit card around, and maybe a device to transfer credits from one to another with an indicator of how many transfer so no one cheats? Then I figured the device could be on the card itself, and two cards interact in a certain method.
Wouldn't it be great to be able to look over how a politician obtains and spends his money? Public officials should lose their privacy while they're in office and all their money transactions should be able to be scrutinized.
Illegal sales like drugs would be more difficult to do because if someone gets caught by the police, the police could then scan the offender's device and see all of his contacts.
Of course you automatically upload to the IRS every tax season at least and FBI maybe more. I'm thinking with cell phone capabilities, it could auto network.
I guess there are a lot of downsides to this too that I'm not seeing, but since it has some good points its worth at least idly talking about. What are some downsides we'd have if we moved to an all credit system? I guess one would be the worry that the government could seize your money with a few clicks. Or maybe two would be hackers.
God spoke to me.
Magnetic stripe huh? ...2008.
I think I haven't used that part of my card ever. This was issued in
It's secure chips and online verification all the way in scnadinavia now. Helpfully, it is hard to overrun your bank account with a debit card this way. I wonder if this was deployed for my or the banks safety?
Bot Assisted Blogging
According to an article I read, Walmart currently doesn't actually take ownership of their inventory until it is sold. That's right...they don't pay the manufacturer until they've already sold the item.
Brilliant way to leverage market dominance into increased interest earnings by holding onto their money a while longer.
We'll finally be able to "swipe" the card for tipping at the strip club now?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
On a keypad that is used to enter only a single combination, wear patterns can leak information. That's one advantage the ATM's keypad has over one on your personal card.
An advantage of entering the PIN on the card's keypad, on the other hand, is that it cannot be gleaned by a fake ATM machine.
1. CASH is always the same speed.
Think of those times when you were in a hurry and you were stuck behind some someone who enters in the wrong pin or chooses the wrong bank account type when they were buying items that cost less than 20 bucks. What if there was a network error? Had they used cash, you would have been out of there long before they finally got the transaction to work.
2. Cash is accepted everywhere.
Not every place accepts Visa or Mastercard and a lot of places do not accept Amex. Some places do not accept debit cards for logistical reasons (ferries, planes and many taxis). Cash is generally accepted everywhere.
3. Cash does not carry a per transaction fee when traveling in a foreign country.
Most credit cards charge a fee per transaction on top of their poor currency exchange fees which is why I take cash with me when I travel to Europe, the States or Japan. In fact, Japan is still very much a cash based society outside of their PASMO/SUICIA system for convenience stores and trains/transit. Don't expect your North American credit or debit card to work over there.
4. Cash is easily transferable between people.
You can lend/give cash to anyone but you cannot do the same with a credit/debit card.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.