Saturday, 16 May 2015

15-may


SBI contactless card

1)      State Bank of India joined its private sector rivals to launch contactless cards using latest near field communication technology (NFC). Called the SBIinTouch cards.

2)      These contactless debit and credit cards are more secure and hassle-free to use at merchant outlets or ATMs and use the NFC technology, which enables users to make payments by waving or tapping the card near the contactless reader instead of swiping or dipping it.

3)      The bank has already issued 1.08 lakh new cards to its customers in the eight largest metros and the remaining customers will get the cards in the following months.

4)      These cards come with a fraud liability cover of Rs.1 lakh.

5)      These cards will be especially targeted towards fast-food outlets, coffee shops and supermarkets where customers make quick transactions.

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Near Field Communication (NFC)

1)      NFC is a set of standards for portable devices. It allows them to establish peer-to-peer radio communications, passing data from one device to another by touching them or putting them very close together.

2)      NFC came out of RFID. RFID, or radio-frequency identification, is the technology used by shipping companies, in large warehouses, and in superstores to keep track of goods. It uses electromagnetic induction in order to transmit information over a short space so that by simply scanning a container a staff member can know what it contains.

3)      It is similar to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but unlike those protocols (and like RFID) NFC can be used to induce electric currents within passive components as well as just send data. And it is faster than Bluetooth, in general.

4)      NFC can work with passive devices that don't require their own power supply, such as travel card readers. NFC's data-transmission frequency is 13.56MHz. NFC can transmit data at either 106, 212 or 424 Kbps (kilobits per second).

5)      There are some security issues with NFC, but they are manageable, if not minor. For one thing, if someone can get close enough to you with an NFC reader, they can read off the contents of your NFC-enabled device.

6)      Perhaps the biggest risk to security posed by NFC is that it makes smartphone even more valuable. Putting all of payment info into one device makes the individual even more vulnerable to that device being stolen.
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