After a long gestation, and a COVID related delay, the mighty swipe MetroCard replacement finally shipped. The OMNY card: a white-label EMV bank payment card using the mastercard payment network, not a MIFARE or FeliCa smartcard like San Fransisco Clipper or Tokyo Suica. MetroCard missed the transit smartcard revolution of […]
Are Chinese manufactured PAX NFC readers a security risk?
Probably not, but the FBI Raids Chinese Point-of-Sale Giant PAX Technology report from Krebs on Security has some thrilling bits: “FBI and MI5 are conducting an intensive investigation into PAX,” the source said. “A major US payment processor began asking questions about network packets originating from PAX terminals and were […]
Apple Pay Japan 5 Year Mark: All of This and Nothing
October is Apple Pay month in Japan. Today, October 21, we have the Apple Pay WAON and nanaco launch. October 2020 saw the Apple Pay PASMO launch ceremony attended by Apple VIPS. October 2016 was the biggest launch of all. This month marks the 5th anniversary of Apple Pay in […]
My Cousin Apple Pay
So the EU is going ahead with ‘open NFC’ antitrust charges against Apple. As posted back in August 2020, the whole open vs closed debate is not easy to define. It’s probably easier to look at it from the simplistic App Store debate of letting developers bypass Apple’s in-app payment […]
The Apple Pay EMV Express Mode Security Trade-off
The Practical EMV Relay Protection paper authored by Andreea-Ina Radu, Tom Chothia, Christopher J.P. Newton, Ioana Boureanu and Liqun Chen, outlines a potential weakness with VISA cards when used with Apple Pay Express Transit. The BBC reported the issue which was then widely reported on Apple news sites. The authors […]