Tap To Pay Demystified

You know that moment where you enter a cafe or restaurant, order something, and the staff flip the dashboard for you to pay?

You tap your card or your phone, and in less than two seconds, payment has been made.

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I highly encourage that instead of inserting or swiping the card, try tapping your card or phone for three reasons:

A) It is much more safer

B) It’s faster

C) It looks pretty rad

The quick exchange is because of the technology embedded in these cards, and the payment reader uses NFC technology. NFC uses antennas to transmit data quickly and securely.

The card readers have a little coil that is embedded in hardware (see the image below), which communicates with the card or your phone (which acts like a card) to process your payment.

The card collects transaction and reader information to create the code, making it difficult to replicate fraudulently because of the cryptographic key.

But for our US readers, this is a space where the United States has really been lagging behind, taking more than a decade to integrate contactless payments into public transportation, whereas countries like the United Kingdom have contactless payments embedded in every public transportation system.

For more information

A video from Wall Street Journal talks about tap to pay more in depth here.

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