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Contactless payments safe despite virus scare

March 30, 2006

Bank Systems & Technology: Over the past several weeks, media headlines have been screaming about the vulnerability of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to viruses and attacks on middleware applications. But remote frequency technology in the payments area is safe, according to Visa USA. Although contactless payments carry a contactless chip, the read range is strikingly different from RFID tech used in inventory management. Contactless payment cards also use 128-bit and Triple DES encryption. "The recent discussion of viruses found in RFID solutions does not impact contactless payments based on these key differences," a Visa spokesperson said.

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