MyCardBlog

You may don’t know that you are carrying a contactless credit card in your wallet, but it’s true. The most horrible thing is this kind of credit card will transmit your name, card number and expiration date to any commercially available RFID scanner that near you or your wallet.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a technology or an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. RFID is widely used to track shipments and inventory in industry. After this idea was introduced to credit card market about 3 years ago, it allows customers to swipe the credit cards past readers in many locations as CVS and McDonald’s etc in a very easy and quick manner. Instead of swiping your credit card, you just hold it up to the reader and after a second it grabs your card number and expiration date through the air and processes the transaction without a signature. (See the American Express card for an example)

Nowadays, the contactless credit cards have become commonplace. There are about more than 42 million contactless cards in circulation. So it’s quite possible that you’re carrying one of these wave-to-pay cards in your wallet without knowing it.

Because it will dramatically decrease the transaction time and easily augment your credit card debit. Credit card issuers are really interested in this technique and making more and more contactless cards. As the number of the contactless cards has increased dramatically, so has concern over the safety of the RFID technique that makes them work. A recent study by the University of Massachusetts and security companies indicated that many of the cards will transmit the cardholder’s name, card number and expiration date unencrypted to anyone nearby with an RFID scanner! In a cybersecurity conference in June 2008, a State University of New York professor demonstrated how a hacker could steal personal information within a few inches. American Express, MasterCard and Visa cards issued by many major credit card issuers face the same problem.

Good new is that Visa requires that credit card issuers not issue cards that transmit the cardholder’s name. American Express also don’t send the name to the card reader. Of course, most credit cards offer zero liability feature to their customers. This might be helpful to protect your from money losses.

The contactless symbol for Visa card is a four vertical wavelike bands. However, some credit card issuers might use other names for the contactless feature. For example, Chase names the contactless payment feature as Chase Blink.

If you don’t like the RFID feature in your credit card, you can buy an “RFID-blocking wallet”. Or you can even manually remove the RFID chip from your credit card! Simply remove the RFID chip won’t damage the credit card.

If you are unsure whether your credit cards have an RFID chip in them or not, you can google your credit card name and RFID. Or you might refer to your credit card instructions. Usually if your credit cards have the MasterCard Pay Pass, Visa PayWAVE and American Express Express Pay features, your credit cards should have an RFID chip in it.