The only good I can see out of this is a series of hysterical news stories on street gangs who are now Wardakking (short for War-RFID-Jacking) by walking past unsuspecting passers-by and stealing their credit card numbers, identities, and immortal souls.
Chase actually had a card with RFID in it back in May, but suddenly Amex does it and they get all kinds of press. Ultimately, every Amex card will have an RFID-like chip in it and you’ll just wave your pelvis or backpack at a POS reader and accidently buy someone else’s lunch. So that’s nice.
UPDATE – After the jump…
American Express adds contactless payments as standard [Finextra]
Anonymous informs us that we’re full of it:
This story is completely wrong. Yeah, it’s true, the source you link to is completely wrong, so it’s not entirely your fault… But then you mention that Chase did this earlier, which is also wrong. Maybe you’ve reported this story incorrectly twice. Shrug.
Here’s the reality: these are contactless smartcards, a.k.a.
ISO 14443. They’ve been used around the world for going on 10 years.
They have absolutely nothing to do with RFID. These are common
in parts of Europe, and the standard in Asia. They are considered
far *safer* than regular credit cards.
Unlike RFID, they can only be read at a distance of centimeters.
But more importantly, they’re based on smartcard tech – which means
that the info that passes from the card to the reader is specific
to that transaction and is worthless to third parties.
UPDATE UPDATE – Now we learn that Anonymous is full of it:
American Express developed ExpressPay in conjunction with Texas Instruments RFid Systems, a world leader in radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The ExpressPay key fob and reader are designed with an open architecture that is compatible with RFID industry standards (ISO/IEC Standard 14443).
Thanks, Jim.
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE – Now Anonymous admits he’s crazy:
OK I’m the original anonymous, and here’s an update to the update to the update!
I do offer a mea culpa. But your story is still a bit off.
This Amex thing isn’t a credit card, as your article claims. It’s a keyfob, like Mobil Speedpass. You load money onto it in small increments from your actual Amex account. But yes, this keychain thing-a-ma-bob is indeed based on RFID. Mea culpa!!
Details are here.
So… you know… you weren’t completely wrong. In fact you were mostly right. As usual. Damn Gizmodo. Sorry for the goof.
Damn right we’re right.
