Anyone else waiting for Plastc card?

[Schwartzinator]

I preordered well over a year ago and marveled at the prospect of being able to carry all of my cards around with me at once. I've since cut from 8 credit + debit to 4 cards and never touching the debit. That number is soon to drop even further as I just don't care about juggling cards chasing 1-2 extra percent. I see no reason now to keep the preorder open other than the fact that it's cool. However, without EMV it's not even any good as a paperweight. One more delay and I'm throwing in the towel.

[nyancat]

Throw in the towel now and cut your losses, seriously. That's what mobile payments are for... I use contactless (here in the UK) for almost all payments, and most of those are with my phone (a few shops don't have the latest profile needed for American Express mobile, so you have to use the actual card if you want to use Amex - Visa/MC are fine tho).

Give it a few years and the US will catch up on technology.

[Anonymous]

I hope we dont go gull contactless. That seems to be way to easy for hackers / RFDI readers to get a hold of. Im wqiting for USA to get all cards with chip and pin though.

[nyancat]

Hi Donald,

As I said on the Amex Platinum metal thread, the security concerns with contactless are largely imagined.

There are some very poor implementations, especially in the US, that have security concerns (but do remember you have no liability), but even the worst implementations are superior to magnetic stripe in security.

Modern EMV contactless is just as secure as EMV contact chip, and it adds some significant privacy protections. Most notably, shops are not given your name.

If you'd like to talk about how contactless is secured or if you have specific concerns, I'd be happy to discuss those.

To answer one common concern in advance - yes, it is true that it is possible to wirelessly read the Primary Account Number (PAN) and expiration date from the card - although not from nearly the distance fear mongers would claim. Tests in a clean environment do not represent a real wallet or purse.

No, this doesn't matter. One of the goals of EMV is to make PAN and expiration date alone worthless. They are assumed to be compromised, and EMV is focused on removing their role as security-sensitive data. No shop should be submitting a transaction on these items alone, and thus a thief knowing them - without additional data they can't easily get - doesn't matter. They simply won't be able to complete a transaction with PAN+expiration like they could have a decade ago.

If you have other concerns I'd be happy to talk about them. A lot of the demos you see are real, but irrelevant. A few represent, as I noted above, real security concerns that have been fixed for years (though many implementations in the US still don't have these security fixes applied!). Even these early, relarively poor implementations are far more secure than magstripe.

[Anonymous]

I paid for two of these things.  Told my buddy I had bought him one.  Then delay, delay. delay.  I felt that by the time it officially arrived it would be obsolete.  So I wrote the company asking for a refund and they gave me my money back with zero hassle.  Then my buddy began asking me whatever happened to the credit card I bought for him.

[Schwartzinator]

I just cancelled. Shame. Could have been so cool.

[Gmood1]

I've also been waiting over a year. I contacted them 2 months ago to cancel. They talked me into waiting and credited my card back $20 for the trouble. I really wanted this device! Doesn't seem like it's ever going to come to the market.

[nyancat]

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@Schwartzinator wrote:
I just cancelled. Shame. Could have been so cool.

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It could have been so cool a decade ago, but its main design horribly insecure - it's cloning the magnetic stripe which is a joke for security. Yes, it was supposed to have contact and contactless chip - but these require bank participation.

A device hanging on to old, insecure methods - or relying on banks to sign up - hardly screams "so cool". 

Cool today? Mobile payments - using tokenised EMV contactless (e.g. Apple Pay, Android Pay, Amex Pay, etc). Far more secure and easier - and they accomplish the exact same thing. For free.