The smart card: Apple Pay competitor or simple stopgap? - CNET - 0 views
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Paying with a Stratos may not be as seamless as holding your iPhone near the register and using Apple Pay. Apple's mobile payments service lets iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners use their smartphones and their fingerprints to charge purchases to their credit cards just by holding their iPhone near a terminal. And while technologists rejoice at Apple Pay's security, only 6 percent of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners used Apple Pay as of March, according to market researcher InfoScout.
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ow so-called smart cards like Stratos, Coin, Plastc and Swyp have come on the scene. When coupled with a smartphone app, these devices -- which cost around $100 -- let users store and toggle among different payment cards on the fly. Cards are scanned in using a small card reader and managed with a smartphone app.
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It would be awesome if every single merchant took Apple Pay," he said. But that's not the reality. "It's kind of crazy that we're in 2015 and we're still paying with cash and plastic, and we have a computer in our pocket." Until the computers in our pocket become the main way to pay, he has a Coin card.
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By October 2015, merchants that haven't upgraded their terminals to accept the new cards will be the ones liable for fraud, not the credit card companies. The result: we'll start to see many more EMV-ready point-of-sale (POS) systems.
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If you have a chip in your card, the POS system is going to prompt you to put your card in the [chip] slot," Mulpuru said. That becomes a problem with products like Stratos, which do not contain chips. That means you'll still need to carry around a backup card.
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What's more, Stratos, Coin and their rivals don't directly store credit or debit card information unencrypted -- and only transmit sensitive data from your smartphone. That makes devices inherently more secure than the standard magnetic stripe credit card. There are also options to deactivate the card if it loses communication with your phone
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I was listening to the news over the week end and was intrigued about a story on a new smart card that would one day take the place of all of our credit cards. My mind started reeling and could not grasp the concept especially with technology and hackers in the forefront of any credit card online usage. I read this article several times and it helped me understand the simplicity of this card and also the fact that your credit/debit account numbers are not stored on the card just a chip then the consumer either uses a PIN number or signature as authorization for payment. Fingerprint technology will be added in the future, which will bring about an evolution into the use of the Smart Card.