Contactless payments have unique security risks

Contactless payments have unique security risks
Tags: Associations / Conferences, Bank / Credit Union, Debit / Credit, EFT Networks, EMV, Networking / Connectivity, Trends / Statistics
August 9, 2005

ePaynews: With Datamonitor predicting the market for contactless payment tokens to grow by 47 percent through 2009, contactless smart cards appear to be moving into the mainstream market. But contactless payment security remains a contentious issue, and the card associations appear to be prepared to assume some of the risk by waiving mandatory PIN entry or signatures for relatively low-value contactless transactions. Although skeptics argue that data could be stolen from contactless payment chips by holding a reader near a device, MasterCard and Visa counter that encryption technology can resolve that weakness.