How about an alert if I leave home without my card, or leave it in a restaurant/bar or if itâs in my bag/wallet and I walk off without it (or it walks off without me)?
Probably needs some proximity technology and pairing with my phone but could help prevent lost cards and report stolen ones faster.
I can only really think something like a Tile Slim would be an easy way to implement this yourself? Although itâs a whole wallet finder and not just for the card itself.
Isnât the range of this less than 10cm? Youâd also have to have your phoneâs NFC on constantly registering the card being there which, amongst other things, is probably going to use a lot of battery.
Monzo uses location data to detect fraud.
If your phone shows that youâre in the UK all the time then they have a transaction the same day from China itâs likely to be fraudulent.
The location thing on Revolut isnât too great though. I turned it off on mine. Too many ATMs I tried had their location set as a location not where it is (maybe the head office, nearest branch, data centre, I donât know) so transactions just get declined.
Happens at POS too. Whenever I use Gailâs in Hampstead the location that comes through is in Hendon, where the office is.
Thatâs a different feature which is designed to prevent fraud, it wouldnât help you if youâd forgotten / lost your card because that feature relies on you making transactions, in order to locate the card.
Active RFID tags have significantly bigger range, up to 12 meteres (last time I researched this topic). They shouldnât be too big either, but range(antenna) and battery life are strictly linked to size of the tag. Wholesale prices are a fraction of a dollar for 1 tag, but production costs/assembly costs would need to included tooâŚ
I donât think that active rfid tags will be strong enough for bigger houses and false positive (phone in bedroom, wallet downstairs) situations can happen.
That being said, NFC in phones is not the same as UHF RFID, so Iâm not sure how active or passive rfid tag could be read by phone. Can it be solved without adding 3rd device to be a link between phone and card?
Maybe we can have some sort of tracker (any technology) with nice battery in a form of keyring attached to card? Can cards have holes? Contactless wouldnât be affected and you put only half of the card in POS terminals - those can use card with tracker attached. Only ATMs would require user to detach tracker dongle, but it would still need to be nice/quick to attach/detach tracker. Card would still fit well in wallets in most cases if tracker dongle has good shape + not very big.
How about using nfc/contactless chip already in phone and card and then storing card with phone. Most phone cases have a slot for one or more cards.
Then after a transaction notification the app could use nfc to check that the card had been returned to the phone case and alert after a min or so if not.
I know it would not suit 100% of users but uses tech thats already in place so would be a software only solution.
I like this idea but having read the thread it would seem unlikely to be able to implement this.
A work around you may like to use is to set a permanent reminder on your phone based on your location.
For example I have in the past used it to set a reminder when I leave a location (one time set up per location, home, work, mateâs house etc) the reminder lists: phone, wallet, keys or whatever other items you may have left.
Obviously it does not know when you have left your card behind but at least you are reminded when leaving regularly frequented locations to double check you have all your stuff with you, including your Monzo card