Barclaycard is RFID’d

From last Monday, March 2nd 2009, Barclays customers getting new or replacement Visa debit cards will receive ones containing RFID technology. This contactless technology will allow them to use the debit card for transactions of up to £10, without entering a PIN for chip and PIN transactions and for bank machine withdrawals.

“Contactless is designed for small transactions, while users will periodically be asked for a PIN,” said the spokesperson. “The card uses dynamic data authentication—in which a unique secret code is generated to authenticate each transaction—while the chip contains different information than the magnetic strip, to prevent cloning.”

I picked up this interesting news piece from ZDnet and it sister site Silicon.com; both of whom then made a lot about the security of this technology. They had discovered that the system has not been made available to independent academic researches to test for vulnerabilities. Almost the majority of the articles from these 2 worthy sources were spent discussing security and some of the points raised had nothing directly to do with RFID!

I would be interested in knowing what you, our readers think of this “new” technology? (How old is RFID? – 1940’s!)