PIN theft case may be boon to contactless payments

PIN theft case may be boon to contactless payments
Tags: Retail Self-Service, Security, Wireless
March 26, 2006

ePaynews: Contactless payments are mainstreaming in the United States, with TowerGroup predicting that by 2009 the U.S. market for contactless payments of less than $5 will total $11.5 billion. The case for chip-based payments in the U.S. resurfaced after the recent PIN theft that affected Visa and several major banks, and forced the re-issue of thousands of cards. Until now, low fraud levels in the U.S. didn't arrant the use of chip-based payment cards, but contactless cards, which use 128-bit encryption and Triple DES encryption, may in fact be a valuable bridging technology.