The demand for contactless payment cards has increased tremendously in recent years because they speed up monetary transactions. USA had issued millions of RFID-enabled credit cards over years with the perception that the contactless cards would provide increased convenience and speed for cardholders during the checkout process.
However, the disadvantages of contactless credit cards are now most prominently felt than their advantages.
According to the researchers at the University of Massachusetts and security companies RSA and Innealta, the new RFID contactless payment card that keeps cardholders’ data in an embedded chip is vulnerable to security attack. These cards can be easily read and data stored in it can be picked up by the frauds.
The RFID credit cards transmit very confidential information such as cardholder’s name, card number and security card and expiration date of the data. However, the person with an RFID reader can read these data conveniently.
The companies like Visa USA, American Express and MasterCard are now taking strong security steps to make the cards safer. For instance, Visa USA restrains its issuers to transmit customer names during the RFID transactions.
