RFID + PIN payments

I was driving across the Pyrenees today, and decided to tank up with diesel in Andorra (price 91c per litre) – 4.5% VAT rate. The total cost was over EUR 30 – i.e. the contact-less limit.

When I went to pay, the guy still did the contact-less touch. The machine asked for my PIN instantly. I was out of the shop in seconds.

Far faster than the dopey implementation of contactless in Ireland where one has to put the contact-less card into the chip reader, wait for the encryption process to take place between the card and reader, then enter the PIN, then wait for the authorization process, and finally remove the card. This occurs if the payment is over EUR 30 or if the system randomly determines that it wishes to verify that the cardholder is still in possession of the card.

Retailers need fast methods to process plastic cards. I am assuming that there is a two-way communications facility between the RFID chip and the retailer’s reader?

The chip card was developed in France nearly 20 years ago, to control card payments because the phone system back then was so poor and slow. The chip and PIN function demonstrated a massive reduction in fraud. One wonders if the PIN and RFID offers the same level of security?

Someone with a wallet carrying 3 or 4 credit or debit cards which are all contact-less faces losses of nearly EUR 500 if the wallet is stolen, and the thief manages to get 4 transactions out of each card without the need for a PIN. Banks should provide an option for the cardholder to switch off the contactless function on ‘secondary’ cards, if they wish, to prevent this happening.