RFID Chip in Your Credit Cards—Should You Worry?

27.07.2023 - 18:43 / smartertravel.com / Credit Card

Say your bank sent you a credit or debit card with an embedded RFID chip. The idea sounds appealing: When you make a purchase, instead of slipping your card into a reader and waiting for a response, all you do is tap the card on a pad somewhere near the terminal. It’s the same sort of technology that many transit systems use for fare cards, where you just tap and go through the barrier.

RFID functionality isn’t confined just to credit and debit cards. U.S. passports issued after 2007 have RFID chips in the cover. Some smartphones also add RFID capability to their credit card applications: Even if your card doesn’t have RFID, if you enter a card in your phone, it gets RFID.

Lots of travelers are worried about a possible downside to this “convenience.” A crook with the right equipment might read your card as you pass through a check-in or security line without your recognizing it at all. And that read captures all the data the crook needs to make a duplicate card that works the same way as yours.

Before you get involved with the problem, you first need to determine whether any of your cards actually has an RFID chip. They are not the same as the visible chips you see on the “chip and signature” or “chip and pin” cards, officially called “EMV” cards, that are quickly becoming the norm here in the U.S. Those chips cannot be read remotely.

Instead, RFID chips are embedded in the plastic and you never see them. The way to determine whether a card has RFID is to check for “Blink,” “PayPass,” or “PayWave” somewhere on the card or if it has this symbol:

So, if you find that at least one of your cards does have an RFID chip, should you worry? As is all too often the case, the answer is a firm, “Maybe.” You hear conflicting reports; the jury is still out:

On most purchases, you not only have to tap the card but also show the card to someone and either sign or enter a pin. Your in-person exposure is limited to vending machines and other situations where you don’t have to verify your identity. But you can make some big-ticket online or phone purchases by just knowing the information on a card.

Security codes in your RFID chip are designed to change each time you use it, so a crook could use a counterfeit card only once. But that once could be a whopper.

The RFID signal from your chip is very weak, so it can be read from only a short distance—the card folks say a few inches. So your information is not at risk unless a crook can pass a reader directly over your purse or wallet. Or until someone develops a reader that works at a distance.

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