May 07, 2007
About NFC Cell Phones and the New Digital Wallets
What happens when you lose one? Can the finder/ thief use it to make purchases? Supposedly there are safeguards, but since you can just "tap" your phone at, say, a cashless vending machine, I don't see how that'd stop a thief. I've yet to come across any articles that explain this.
Most people guard their cell phones closely, so it won't be a big issue. Not yet. But since ABI Research predicted back in 2004 that that 50% of phones would have NFC by 2009, it'll become a growing issue. It happens; phones get misplaced or stolen. And if phones become our wallets, isn't that more incentive for some people to steal them? That is, if it's easy to use any stored credits. And will it be easy for a thief to determine what your recent purchases were?
I'm assuming you can have your phone disabled if it gets "misplaced", though you'd have to find a phone elsewhere to make the call. (To whom, exactly? I've not seen any indication that payment credits on NFC phones are handled by credit card issuers or some other organization.)
There's a similar problem for contactless credit cards, since a signature is not required for transactions under $25 for most cards. Sure, these can be easily cancelled, and the transactions removed from a card carrier's credit statement, so the point is moot. But as for a lost NFC phone, I'm guessing that knowledge of what happens is only available to those who have one.
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