NFC technology comes with a range of security features that help protect financial data from prying eyes, including:
1. PROXIMITY PROTECTION
Contactless payment solutions work over incredibly short distances (we're talking about inches, not yards). In order for a would-be thief to potentially steal information, he or she would have to stand uncomfortably close to an NFC-enabled device. This proximity protection represents the first level of defense.
2. USER INITIATION
In order to begin each transaction, the customer must actively initiate the contactless payment process. This usually requires launching the appropriate NFC application within the phone in order to establish a connection between the device and the merchant's reader. So even if a thief gets close enough, no transactions can happen in standby mode.
With some NFC applications, the user must also verify a transaction by using fingerprint scanning technology or a private pass code.
3. SECURE ELEMENT VALIDATION
Once a connection has been established, the transaction only goes through after the card or mobile device has validated the purchase using a secure element chip. This validation process assigns a unique digital signature to every payment instead of transferring credit or debit card numbers between the device and reader.
With three separate levels of protection, NFC technology represents one of the most secure payment options in the world. But no payment technology is 100 percent foolproof — not even cash.
EMV is designed to prevent fraud.
Chip cards are really hard to clone.
Chip and Pin credit cards have sophisticated encryption.
These are some reasons for which EMV cards are more safe than magnetic stripes.
If we compare NFC and EMV then NFC Technology is More Secure than EMV. NFC technology offers three key security features – biometrics, secure element chips and tokenization. These elements are exponentially more secure than EMV because they are unique to a specific device and individual user.
Biometrics, for example, eliminate the need for consumers to enter a password on a device by incorporating user identification measures. These range from face, fingerprint, signature, and retina or voice recognition. Secure element chips found in NFC-enabled devices are a tamper-resistant platform that houses, processes and communicates data securely. Additionally, tokenization substitutes sensitive data with non-sensitive data, which masks a credit or debit card’s 16-digit card number and expiration date in order to help limit the impact of a data breach.
Not only is Mobile Pay more secure but it’s also more convenient. With an on-the-go consumer, getting things done faster is everything. While merchants are dealing with more regulation, the consumer wants things done on their timeline and EMV is simply not as quick when it comes to swiping traditional cards.
As Mobile Pay continues to gain ground in the payments arena, an easy way to solve the security issues and give the consumer what they want can be accomplished with an NFC capable device. Merchants such as Starbucks adopted the technology early on and report that as much as 21% of their total sales are made up of mobile payments and accounted for more than 200 million in sales...
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