[LINK] contactless credit cards

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

McDonalds contactless card rollout to lower skimming risk

By Liz Tay on Nov 9, 2010 http://www.itnews.com.au/News


McDonald's Australia will switch on contactless credit card technology 
this month that enables it to charge cards from up to five centimetres 
away.

The technology is a feature of Ingenico-Westpac terminals already in use 
at 816 McDonald's outlets nationwide.

When switched on at the end of this month, it will enable customers to 
charge up to $100 to Visa payWave or MasterCard PayPass cards without 
swiping, signatures or PINs.

A Visa spokesman said the contactless payment card technology was based 
on the EMV standard, and used a secure, embedded microchip and antenna to 
communicate with card readers.

Card readers 'powered up' a card via radio frequency for each 
transaction, and transmitted a unique, encrypted code in a process known 
as 'dynamic card authentication'.

Transactions would then be handled in the same way as traditional Visa 
transactions, with the same layers of security and theft protection 
coverage.

Should a customer inadvertently 'wave' two separate, contactless cards at 
the same time, only the card which the reader picked up first would be 
charged, the spokesman said.

The spokesman expected Visa payWave cards to be an "unattractive target 
for criminals" as only smaller transactions would be processed via 
contactless technology.

Visa payWave cards also would be less susceptible to counterfeit card 
fraud, the spokesman said, because the EMV chip technology was "virtually 
impossible to duplicate" and the card would not need to be passed to 
sales staff during contactless transactions.

And it would be "very difficult" for criminals to make unauthorised 
transactions because readers were registered to approved merchants so any 
fraudulent claims would have to be routed through the merchant's 
financial institution.

Last year, Westpac was forced to block more than 10,000 debit and credit 
cards after criminals stole bank details from compromised EFTPOS machines 
in McDonald's outlets.

McDonald's CTO Henry Shiner said its plan to implement contactless 
payment technology pre-dated the card skimming incident.

"The planning and development of our cashless solution has been in 
progress for a substantial length of time and pre-dates the events that 
took place last year," he said.

"This is just one more efficiency that we have introduced to improve the 
customer experience ... Not only does this offer our customers more 
flexibility in the way they pay, it also provides them with a highly 
secure payment method."

Visa expected close to 20,000 merchant outlets, including IGA, Red 
Rooster, 7-Eleven and Bunnings to have deployed contactless payment 
technology.

Visa payWave cards were available from Macquarie Bank, ANZ and NAB. The 
Commonwealth Bank, Woolworths and Jetstar offered MasterCard Paypass 
cards.

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Cheers,
Stephen

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