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A comment on Plastc Card. Parent comment

Re:Plastc Card by abritishguy on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @05:52AM (#8426095)
From my careful reading of their released material this is how I think they are doing it:

They clone the magnetic stripe part of a chip and pin card and then have their own chip and pin layer that they put on top.

In the UK the only reason you can't use magnetic stripe is because no shops allow it (if they do then they are completely reliable for the authenticity of that transaction) - if you could add a chip and pin layer on top of mag strip data then this might work (would still require a lot of fiddling and as far as I can see transactions would have to go via platc like google wallet).

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Re:Plastc Card by tfinniga on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @06:49AM (#8426227)
This makes the most sense to me. They have their own chip and pin layer, which forwards the charge to the appropriate card account on the backend.

They probably don't have to worry about fraud, since the barrier to entry is $155 and they charge your card immediately.

The only thing that might be tricky is whether they get the 'card present' rates or not.

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Re:Plastc Card by ZoFreX on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @07:31AM (#8426340)
Plenty of shops still allow it in the UK (source: my chip broke), but hardly any employees know how to tell the till to swipe a card, so it's still difficult.
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