Swipeless Blink Credit Cards by J.P. Morgan Chase
I read an article in CNNMoney today that made me cringe - J.P. Morgan Chase & Company will be offering a swipeless credit card that give holders the option of swiping or just waving their cards in front of a reader. These cards have a special chip that the card reader will detect and charge and the card holders won't even need to sign. While it rates very high on the "cool meter," it scares me how much credit card fraud is going to increase with the removal of several key security features.
Let's take the low-tech route and think about these cards. If you never have to show the cashier the card, you have rendered the signature and photo portrait security mechanisms useless. When used, both mechanisms probably could stop credit card fraud in its tracks but we've come to expect that cashiers don't verify either as often as they should. Also, without actually needing verification of payment (signature), could you pay for something unwittingly with one credit card in your wallet/purse while hard-swiping another? What if you're maxed out on the "blink" card and wanted to swipe another card? J.P. Morgan Chase is going to get rich off this! I'm sure these are questions they've asked but... as history has shown, sometimes the most obvious things are overlooked.
Let's go high-tech fraud then... what prevents someone from sniffing out these "special chips" and collecting a whole bunch of data? You sit there with a transmitter/receiver, a signal processor, and write up some software to decode the transmission and you have yourself a credit card collector. You fake being a reader yourself and just query one of the chips for sensitive data. It probably isn't hard to payoff someone manufacturing these readers to sell you one (because you're a vendor of course!)... so there you go.
Finally, what are you really saving? Time? Is it that hard or that time-consuming to hard-swipe your card in the reader as opposed to waving it in front of it? I honestly don't think the tradeoffs make any sense whatsoever and we're just looking at a gimmick by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. at trying to get a few more card holders.
This post was originally published at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so here.
• VirtualBank gives you up to 5.13% APY for your savings!
• Blue Cash from American Express: 5% Back on Gas, Up to 5% cash back on eligible purchases, No Annual Fee, 0% Introductory APR for 6 months, Pay over time
• Try Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express. Great rewards and first year fee free!
• Bad Credit Home Loans
• Life Insurance in 10 minutes if qualified. No medical exam.
For most of the working population, or those who are listed as a dependent for someone in the working population, health insurance isn't much of a concern. The reason for this is because you are part of your employer's group health insurance plans with your ... Read
I received a free copy of David Bach's The Automatic Millionaire as part of a promotion from American Century (your fund fees at work) and this is a brief executive review of the book. Executive Summary: Automate the saving of retirement funds directly from your ... Read
Citibank always has a bunch of good offers for opening a checking account with them and they're all structured very similarly. Basically there is a minimum funding amount (typically $1,500), a first tier requirement before you get one award, then a second tier requirement to ... Read
So about three weeks ago, like a week before they raised their rates to 3.25% (and before ING raised their rates to 2.80%), I decided I was going to open up an Emigrant Direct account so I could get the best interest rate possible by ... Read
