Contactless payment

Contactless payment systems are credit cards and debit cards, key fobs, smart cards, or other devices, including smartphones and other mobile devices, that use radio-frequency identification (RFID) or near-field communication (NFC) for making secure payments. The embedded integrated circuit chip and antenna enable consumers to wave their card, fob, or handheld device over a reader at the point-of-sale terminal. Contactless payments are made in close physical proximity, unlike other types of mobile payments which use broad-area cellular or Wi-Fi networks and do not involve close physical proximity. EMV (abbreviation for Europay, Mastercard, and Visa) is a common standard used by major credit card and smartphone companies for use in general commerce. Contactless smart cards that function as stored-value cards are popular for use as transit system farecards, such as the Oyster card (London, UK) or RioCard (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). These can often store non-currency value (such as monthly passes), in additional to fare value purchased with cash or electronic payment. Apple Pay on iPhones and Google Pay on Android mobile phones are common forms of contactless payments used. These types of payments use tokenization which encapsulates a card issuer's details within the mobile phone. Some suppliers claim that transactions can be almost twice as fast as a conventional cash, credit, or debit card purchase. Because no signature or PIN verification is typically required, contactless purchases are usually limited to small value sales. Lack of authentication provides a window during which fraudulent purchases can be made while the card owner is unaware of the card's loss. Major financial institutions and multinational corporations now offer contactless payment systems to customers as contactless credit cards have become widespread in the US, UK, Japan, Germany, Canada, Australia, France, the Netherlands, etc., as consumers are likely to spend more money using their cards due...