✅ Disabling contactless feature on card

It’s the sort of drivel that health researchers like to spout as it is great clickbait - your chance of getting insert horrible condition here is 50% higher if you eat bacon on Tuesdays. Yes, it went from a vanishingly small number like 1 in a million to another vanishingly small number, 1.5 in a million.

But mathematical rigour has no place in Daily Fail style reporting.

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I think that card clash is an important issue that needs to be solved but it has to be solved differently to this.

Firstly contactless readers need to start dealing with more than 1 NFC card in the field which is fully supported by the underlying standards. Despite only having 1 card in my wallet capable of making a contactless transaction, card readers reject my wallet because my work ID is in there. On the other hand, my work card readers successfully index the cards in my wallet and read from the work ID card to confirm me.

Now that fixes MY wallet. BUT in the situation you have multiple cards capable of making a contactless transaction in your wallet, @Mikeee is dead right - the reader will either see the wrong one, or see multiple and throw up.

What we need is a way to write a bit to the card to disable contactless on the card itself (not through the app/backend software). This would be as simple as holding your card to the back of your (android) phone and having it disable/enable contactless at the hardware level. I have no idea if the current MiFARE chips support this but if I were banks I’d be pushing them hard for this feature…

Just my $.02

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Or what about a little inline physical switch (similar to the ‘lock’ switch on SD cards)? The switch could introduce a break in the antenna circuit when in ‘contactless off’ mode. I’d much prefer this, as:

  1. It would be easy to determine at a glance whether contactless is enabled
  2. It is trivial to enable and disable the contactless of a card, without getting out and fiddling about with my phone
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Don’t know about you but after a month my cards are warped from being in my wallet - not sure a (what I’d assume to be flimsy) switch would help those like me much…:sweat_smile:

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Seeing as other prepaid card providers offer this feature is find it odd that Monzo has not yet implemented it. On my Revolut card i keep my contactless turned of 99% of the time and only enable it when i am using the card. I think this feature will have to be added in order to keep up with the competition, do you agree?

Have you ever had your card details stolen because of the contactless chip? It is crazy how easy it is to do and i have met countless people that have had their card cloned and used while still in the possession of their own card! Contactless is easy but the security of it is laughable! I keep mine in an RFID wallet but that is not really ideal!

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How do you know they had their card cloned via contactless and not some other means?

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I must admit this kind of theft doesn’t really bother me. The chances of someone skimming my card is so high. Mainly due to the fact I have more than one contactless card in my wallet at any one time. Try just holding your wallet up to a contactless reader with more than one card and it will ask to present one card.

That said, my current wallet does have RFID protection (I wanted the wallet, not the protection). With Monzo’s instant notifications, the chances are the account holder will spot the fraud and freeze the card before all funds are drained.

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There is more than one instance so i can not give an answer for everyone but if you have not put a card in a reader or an atm for months and only used contactless and you find out the card has been cloned then there is a high chance it was because of the contactless.

I think if the competition want to waste their time developing a feature that doesn’t add significant value then great. But that’s definitely not a reason for Monzo to build it too.

No & according to the article I posted earlier in the thread, your chances of this happening are very slim. Then, if it does, Monzo will reimburse you anyway :slightly_smiling_face:

It is easy to clone the magstripe on your card (which is why Monzo disable it by default) but that’s not the same thing as contactless fraud…

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There’s not a high chance it’s because of contactless unless you have proof otherwise?

In theory you’d be able to tell (or at least the bank would) because surely a card that had its contactless skimmed would only be able to do contactless transactions, one with its magstripe cloned would only be able to do magstripe, one where the details were stolen online would only be able to do online, etc.

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it does actually appear to be a standard as the curved notch in one end of the accessibility card is the same on RBS Group (incl NatWest), Barclays, Handelsbanken UK, etc

Just to show what this looks like:

I’ve never had any problems with acceptance of this card, the slightly non-standard shape doesn’t seem to be an issue.

I’m not saying I’m worried about the risks of contactless anymore, just this is an effective way of disabling it for those who are. I agree with @alexs and others that the risk seems to be minimal. And with :monzo: you’ll get a notification the first time a skimmed card is used, and the most you’ll be out of pocket (temporarily) is £30 with contactless. If they’ve skimmed your contactless details, they can’t use them for larger chip & PIN purchases.

So I think the convenience far outweighs the risk. I’m against even the hassle of a shielded wallet. I love being able to just tap my wallet to the reader and pay, no card removal necessary. :heart:

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The only thing I have heard is that the card could be swallowed by ATMs if it is found to be faulty. Only something I saw mentioned here on the forums so not sure on the validity of that.

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I’d be very surprised if the majority of ATMs have any form of contactless reader - they are ancient!

I really don’t get this worry about contactless though…

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There is anti collision in NFC. Standard credit card readers ask you to present one card because they can’t tell which one you actually want to use, but a scammer will instead use the anti collision mechanism to skim all of your cards one by one.

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Santander ATMs have contactless. Limited to their cards by the looks of it though as I couldn’t get any of my Monzo, Starling or Capital One cards to work with it.

If you are out on the raz and you a fear of losing it. If you could switch it off time to time would not have to worry about losing it and forgetting to freeze the card or till its too late. Just a thought

Readers that have been nobbled to withdraw too much are a possible attack vector (Monzo would catch that, if you’re paying attention) - they can’t repeat transactions as they’re all unique, so replay attacks don’t work. Cloning? Downgrade attacks won’t work on Monzo if magstripe is disabled*, and anyway they don’t get the CV2 so they’re of limited use in the real world.

By far the greatest risk of fraud is someone getting hold of your card and writing the details down… that’s why you never give it to anyone (and nobody should be asking for it).

  • I’m told the mechanism these hacks used has been fixed anyway

This is definitely the case.
I think it’s done for anti-fraud measures because generally faulty cards are ones people have cloned and messed up somewhere along the line. If you get your pin wrong a number of times I think it also swallows your card…

Your right, I do remember reading a very interesting post about this somewhere.

Can we disable contact less, I would prefer that if card stolen while abroad?

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