Do you necessarily have to protect your bank card from contactless payment fraud? According to figures from the Banque de France, in the first half of 2022, these scams are minimal. Fraud carried out through the contactless payment system represents less than 0.03% of the total fraud carried out with French bank cards.
The big winner is obviously remote payment, in particular payments made using prepaid cards or fraudulent transfers, a very widespread practice among fraudsters, and which far dethrones contactless fraud.
To rob someone contactlessly, you need to have the right equipment, the equivalent of a functional payment terminal. While there are some precedents for the use of fraudulent payment terminals, they are very rare. In fact, it is necessary to link your device to a company bank account in order to collect the stolen sums.
In addition, contactless payments have a limit of fifty euros and, after five payments, you must enter the PIN code of the credit card to be able to pay contactless again. Therefore, this type of fraud is easily detected.
Therefore, these risks exist, but they are minimal. However, their rarity is not an obstacle for sellers, who sell “safe” but not always useful card holders.
Already, some models sold on the web consist of a card holder equipped with an aluminum layer to stop transmissions. The risk of this device is simply to demagnetize your bank card and thus render it useless.
booming business
Despite everything, it is possible to obtain a card holder that blocks RFID transmissions (signals that allow the use of contactless). The “anti-fraud” business is such that some leather goods manufacturers have made it an added value in some of their card holders, wallets or even bags.
But most products are found on e-commerce sites, for less than ten euros and with a good chance of ending up with a product that does not work. Doing a search on Amazon, you find dozens and dozens of cases like this, sometimes without any guarantee of its effectiveness.
If, despite everything, the purchase of protection for your credit card seems essential to you, it will be necessary to inform yourself well about the product and the person -or company- that sells it.
Source: BFM TV
