All you need to know about contact-less financial cards

The invention of plastic financial cards have revolutionized the way we shop. They have done away with the need to carry around a lot of cash with us. Card providers keep coming up with various upgradations to make their customer’s transaction through the financial cards more convenient and handy. The remarkable upgrade to contact-less cards is one among them. Contact-less cards are growing demand and significance day by day. If you have the plans to get your card upgraded to contact-less card, it will be better to learn more about it.

What are contact-less cards?

Payments has become much easier with contact-less cards. Previously you were required to insert the financial card in the card reader, then enter the four digit PIN number to complete the transaction. Now with the contact-less card, all you need to do is to just tap the card on the card reader to make the payment.

In UAE, contact-less technique can be used to make any payment within the range of AED 3000 to AED 5000. This limit is decided by the bank. Any transaction above the defined limit would require you to enter the PIN number. The contact-less debit and credit card are issued with a wireless symbol which symbolizes the contact-less feature. So the bottom line is, all the financial contact-less cards are dual interface which has both the contact and contact-less feature enabled.

How do contact-less payment work?

NFC, Near Field communication is the technology behind contact-less cards. NFC is a type of radio frequency identification (or RFID) technology that allows us to identify things through radio waves. NFC chips are embedded in the card and make a small radio connection with the card reader, providing it with encrypted information about your transaction. NFC transactions take place over a specific radio frequency that enables the card or smartphone to communicate with the payment reader when they’re close together (usually 10 centimeters or less).

What are its benefits?

Contact-less cards are very convenient to use, without a doubt. One has to simply tap the card against the reader to make the payment. The verification process is much faster and you will receive the confirmation message twice as fast as the regular financial cards. The coolest part is that, you are not required to handover the card to the merchant, or the waiter or the fuel station staff. So they won’t get to see your card details which creates an additional layer of security.

Are contact-less financial cards secure?

Contact-less financial cards have multiple layer of security to safeguard from fraudulent use.

However we cannot completely rule out the possibilities of getting your card information taken out using high sensor card reader and being misused. There have also been cases that the stolen or lost cards being used without being able to trace back for some time. There have been reports of frauds using free mobile apps to read and hack into NFC data. NFC technology is vulnerable to skimming attacks as well.

To protect against this, PIN numbers will be asked for transactions about an allowed limit and even multiple transactions within a day. Moreover the experts says, even if the card data is stolen using mobile apps, no fraudulent transactions are possible due to the multiple layer of securities.