Card clash: if you use contactless to travel, how do you organise your cards?

MSE_Laura_F

If you use contactless payment when travelling, how do you avoid card clash?

Do you use RFID-blocking sleeves?
Do you only carry one card with you when you go out?
Do you take several cards but keep them in different places?
Or do you use a virtual wallet on a mobile phone to pay instead?

400ixl

I use Google pay on my phone wherever possible. Failing that I have an RFID blocking sleeve which holds 5 cards and pop out the one that I need when I need to tap it.

blue.peter

None of the above. As always, I have several cards in my wallet. The one I want to use to pay for my travel is taken out of the wallet, used, and replaced.

eDicky

Why would cards 'clash' if you only present one of them to the terminal..? Obviously you don't tap a whole full wallet. What has 'traveling' got to do with it..?

JES_F1

I've never considered "card clash" when travelling or doing any other spending. I use Google Pay on my mobile or simply take a card out of my purse.

MSE_Laura_F

Thanks all for your answers.

@eDicky - I've always kept one payment card in my purse (alongside my various other cards - library, ID, loyalty cards etc) and held the whole purse against the reader when I go through the ticket barriers. I've always just found it quicker than having to sift through and pull out the payment card. Now I'm in a situation where I've got a couple of payment cards in frequent use.

Lots of useful ideas for me to consider here - thanks again!

Vortigern

Card clash is a useful feature that almost certainly prevents any card being read by a passing scanner when there are several cards together in a wallet in a pocket.  I don't use RFID blocking, although It's getting harder to find a wallet without it.

blue.peter

MSE_Laura_F said:

I've always just found it quicker than having to sift through and pull out the payment card.

Ah, now, perhaps that's a benefit of using a wallet: every card is in its own slot, so there's no need to sift through. I can see the top of each card and easily pull out the one I want. I wonder if you can get a wallet-like purse that opens out to give you slots for your cards... ah, yes, I'm thinking of something along these lines:

(Image from Amazon)

Would that help you?

400ixl

As contactless theft becomes more of an issue due to readers becoming commodity products I wouldn't have any contactless payment cards unprotected when travelling on congested public transport. Anyone could walk past you and press a contactless payment machine or card reader against your bag, purse, wallet, pocket and get a payment  or details from the card.

This is why I always use Google Pay (Apple pay works just as well) due to it requiring the app to be active in order to respond to contactless payment requests. You can also store loyalty cards etc in your digital wallet as well if you feel inclined to share your data in that way. All of my physical cards are then protected from RFID readers unless I decide to take them out.

I use a pop up wallet for storing the physical cards. No longer carry a normal wallet at all as everything is either in the pop up wallet (which is easily carried more securely in the front pocket) or on the phone.

[Deleted User]

400ixl said:

As contactless theft becomes more of an issue due to readers becoming commodity products I wouldn't have any contactless payment cards unprotected when travelling on congested public transport. Anyone could walk past you and press a contactless payment machine or card reader against your bag, purse, wallet, pocket and get a payment  or details from the card.

This is why I always use Google Pay (Apple pay works just as well) due to it requiring the app to be active in order to respond to contactless payment requests. You can also store loyalty cards etc in your digital wallet as well if you feel inclined to share your data in that way. All of my physical cards are then protected from RFID readers unless I decide to take them out.

I use a pop up wallet for storing the physical cards. No longer carry a normal wallet at all as everything is either in the pop up wallet (which is easily carried more securely in the front pocket) or on the phone.

Problem is, that is beyond the realms of likelihood. You can't just buy a contactless card reader and go around the tube waving it around people's pockets and somehow steal their money. The NFC process has to be done at a POS terminal which is registered to a bank account. A terminal would thus be linked to the owner, and a stolen one would be blocked. Similarly, card details are encrypted during the transaction, they wouldn't get the card security code or your name or any of the encryption keys (which change every time) so they can't create a fake card

1) it's extremely obvious and criminals largely do not want to draw attention to themselves as they could easily be caught

2) it requires an investment (vs say pickpocketing or distraction theft) for no guaranteed returns

3) who is going to process all these payments for them? Do you imagine a thief is going to spend a fortune not only buying this reader but also setup some sort of traceable account with a payment processor to take the money?

4) simply having things like keys, a phone or even multiple contactless cards together prevents it working as the signals conflict

Contactless payments are easily traced - so if 10 people on a train report a theft and the banks see all the payments are going to a person's account, boom, arrested.

In fact, the myth of people walking around stealing card details / money off contactless cards by buying and waving around card readers near pockets in public, has somehow become mainstream, despite being virtually impossible and thus extremely unlikely to happen. Criminals who are technically advanced are vastly more likely to use things like hacking via public wifi when there is virtually no risk to them

Wellard_Mann

I use a trifold wallet. My TfL travel pass is in one leaf and the other cards in that compartment are non-smart so no card clash. My walkaround cards (one Visa and one MasterCard) are in another compartment. That way I can simply open one leaf of the wallet and touch on the reader without needing to extract the card. 

I remain wholly unconvinced that there is any risk of my card details being captured by people scanning them with card readers through pockets/handbags.