Tag: nfc mobile payments

This adds one more option to the limited number of cards that are currently available to use.

The joint venture Isis mobile wallet that was created through AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon has not been entirely popular among consumers, even after its nationwide launch in November, but the payments option is now working to overcome one of its primary barriers to adoption.

The system is now supporting American Express Serve to help to boost its cards.

One of the primary problems that consumers have had with the Isis mobile wallet is that it supported only two cards. Those are the Chase and American Express cards. This means that if a consumer wishes to try the service he or she must have one of those two cards. It won’t support regular debit cards, nor the two credit card giants, Visa and MasterCard, at the moment. This new addition could help to change that.

The latest change to the Isis mobile wallet could mean that more cards will be compatible, if indirectly.

With the support that the payments service will now have for American Express Serve, it will mean that there could be a roundabout way for consumers to be able to choose their favorite cards to pay for their purchases. The reason is that Serve acts as a kind of digital prepaid card that can be prepaid. This means that it can be loaded with funds from credit cards, debit cards, or a bank account. Once the funds have been added, it can be used in any location that already accepts American Express credit cards.

As Serve has already been doing a great deal better than the Isis mobile wallet, overall, particularly among business clients, it looks as though this could give the program a considerable shot in the arm in terms of its appeal to consumers and its compatibility with the types of cards that they already carry. It has also been considered to be quite helpful in terms of expense management, as it functions in the same way as cash instead of credit. It makes it easier for the user to be able to stick to a budget and pay attention to how much he or she is spending.

A hidden antenna was used by researchers to test the ease of sensitive customer data theft.

A paper was recently published, entitled “Eavesdropping near field contactless payments: a quantitative analysis”, which detailed a study in which researchers examined mobile safety attacks through NFC technology security meant for contactless payments transactions.

The researchers made an antenna that they hid on shopping carts using low cost electronics.

Their explanation for this effort was to test NFC technology security with a near field communication inductive loop antenna, which was employed for mimicking an ISO 14443 transmission. Then, in order to be able to actually “eavesdrop”, there was a second, identical inductive loop antenna that was installed onto a shopping cart, which they modified in order to transmit in a way that was like an antenna.

Even though NFC technology security has been touted as safe, researchers found the opposite.

The researchers in this study found that although near field communication based contactless payments are becoming increasingly popular in the United Kingdom and Europe, and that consumers are trusting this tech as safe, these transactions are actually more vulnerable than had previously been thought.

The belief that there could be problems is not new as some had already been pointing out certain vulnerabilities – three, in fact – as early as 2008. Since that time, hacking into near field communications transmissions for payments and directly relaying, skimming, or eavesdropping on sensitive data transmissions from customers has been in the spotlight.

Until now, services had not known how to make this tech both simple and reliable. This is how these transactions are now often viewed. However, these researchers, who are from the University of Surrey, have now looked further into the safety of the tech through the use of cheap and easily accessible electronics from stores. They were able to measure the distance, success rates, and a number of other factors.

What they showed, was that NFC technology security isn’t as high as some might think. They determined that if an attacker with the same equipment was to head out and “shop” for a consumer’s payments data, it would not be difficult for a cyber attack to occur through the use of these electronics, while pointing a shopping cart at the victim as he or she pays for the purchase.