Some £1.5BILLION a month is now spent on contactless cards, but how safe are they?

Contactless card spending has topped £1.5billion in the space of a month for the first time – but how safe is it? This is how to protect yourself

Safetyness of contactless cards — *67 contactless purchases are made every second - but how safe are they?*

The UK Cards Association said contactless payments totalled a record £1.51billion in March.

One in seven of all card transactions are now contactless, compared with one in 16 a year ago, the association said.

Some 67 contactless purchases were made every second in March, with 179.6 million contactless purchases in total.

Richard Koch, head of policy at the UK Cards Association, said: "It took almost eight years for monthly contactless spending to reach half a billion pounds - now it's grown by the same amount in just four months.

"This dramatic rise shows that paying with contactless is now second nature for millions of consumers who see it as an alternative to cash.

"Contactless cards are already being used to pay for travel and to donate to charity and as the technology evolves we will see even more environments where contactless will enable fast, easy and secure payments."

In September 2015, the limit for a single payment that could be made using contactless was increased by £10 to £30, making it an increasingly handy alternative to cash.

The technology enables customers to pay for goods with a single tap of their card on a reader, without the need to provide a signature or enter their Pin.

The range of places where contactless payments are accepted includes Aldi, Barnardo's, Greggs, McDonald's, the M6 Toll, London Buses, London Tubes and the Post Office.

There are around 86.5 million contactless cards in issue in the UK, including debit and credit cards.

Someone making a "tap and go" payment spent £8.40 per transaction on average in March, up by 11p on February.

How safe is it?

The rise in contactless cards means that, with the right device, they just need to walk by you to either grab £30 from your account, or the details of your card to use later on.

The issue was brought into the in February, after a photo emerged of a man on public transport in Russia with a contactless card reader in his hand ready to use.

Worse, there has been at least one case in the UK where a thief stole a man's card details and racked up £2,125 worth of spending without the card ever leaving the man's possession.

So we wondered how hard something like this is to actually do, and just how vulnerable we are to it?

Testing to see how at risk you are

It took less than a minute to search for an app that turns a smartphone into a card reader, download it then drop the phone next to a wallet to see if the card could be read while inside.

It could. Not just on one person, and not just with one wallet. In less than five minutes we'd pulled seven people's card details, all from different wallets and purses, just using a phone.

It even worked when the card was inside someone's wallet, inside someone's pocket.

And despite warnings about the danger of card clash, when we tried it with a wallet that had three different contactless cards in it, it still worked. All that happened was that the reader picked one and took its details, ignoring the rest.

We should stress that we used a simple, legal, app and could pull card details such as the long card number, the provider and expiry date.

This is not enough to actually take money from someone's account. In the UK you need this information plus the three digit code on the back of the card to shop with. This isn't included in any of the information pulled using free apps.

However, an actual point of sale terminal would allow you to pull £30 straight from the card istelf.

So how do you protect yourself?

The good news was that while we found out when we were at risk, we also found out what would block the cards being read.

In many cases, simply turning your wallet around so coins etc were between the card and the outside blocked the reader.

However, there are also more secure ways that don't rely on you remembering which side your cards are on.

You can buy a RFID-blocking wallet or credit card holder that will block the contactless signal effectively. These cost from a few pounds to a lot more.

You can also buy individual sleeves for your cards that will fit inside any wallet for a couple of pounds (or less if you buy a multi-pack) – meaning cards won't be read or clash with each other.

Of course, the blocking technology – the technical term is “Faraday Cage” - is really rather simple. Meaning you can even build your own using duct tape and tinfoil or protect your own card slots. Although we'd advise testing home-made ones first before relying on them.

How scared should you be of losing money?

While it's clearly remarkably easy for someone to get your bank details from inside your wallet, it's a lot harder to pull money itself out.

"We have not received any reports of this type of incident ever occurring in the UK,” a spokesman for The UK Cards Association told Mirror Money.

He pointed out that to receive any money from a contactless card payment, a retailer account must be set up with an acquiring bank. All acquirers carry out thorough security checks before setting up an account, and monitor new accounts for any suspicious activity.

Additionally, every card payment is fully traceable, right through to the recipient account, meaning if any fraud is reported the recipient is easily identifiable.

“Cardholders are fully protected against fraud and would receive a full refund from their bank," he added.

Source: Mirror UK

2016-05-20