Mobile Payment Implant

edited December 2015 in RFID/NFC
We've all been there, trying to describe your RFID implant to your friends and family, with little success. 

For me, there are a few go to examples. In order to describe NFC I use the "new fangled" Apple or Android Pay as an example that everyone knows about. Their prompt response is almost always "Oh! So you can use it to pay for stuff?!" to which I reply with "Well, no..."

Anyways, that got me thinking, how can we make that a reality? Obviously there has already been exhaustive talk of emulating RFID credit cards, and even extracting the chips out of the cards to be encased in glass capsules. However, this little device has been on my mind for quite a while.




It seems dead simple, with most of the trickery being handled in the software. With a little time, it seems like it could be adapted to emulate any sort of magnetic swipe card. In the post it appears that he manages to visually decode the bits on the back of card using some powdered iron.

I wonder how feasible it would be to make this into an implant?
A few questions/considerations
  • Longevity: The title of the article claims the ability to defeat chip and pin, but that is of course assuming that the machine still has the hardware to read magnetic swipe strips. Everyone knows that in the U.K. chip and pin is now the standard, and I am wondering how long it will take U.S. to switch solely to chip and pin hardware. If I am not mistaken there are a few places that only will accept chip an pin, regardless of their machine's hardware. 
  • Integration: I have no idea whether this would be useful enough for someone to dedicate a sole implant to, but it might be an interesting add on to some other general purpose implants that people are designing. The coils are they key.... Only an H-Bridge and another coil to emulate all magnetic swipe cards? Seems like it could be easier enough.
  • Etcetera: Coatings, battery life, miniaturization, placement, you know the drill. 
So any thoughts, anyone interested in making one and testing it's functionality? I might get around to it soon. It seems like he is pretty hush hush about his code, as it isn't included in his repo, but you guys are smart.  

Edit: Actually it seems like he did post his code after all, however he doesn't include how he disables the chip and pin. The repo can be found on the hackaday article.
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Comments

  • Check out the coin.

    Apple Pay and Samsung pay both use NFC but that is simply the delivery method. Most of it works through the software. As far as I am aware if you simply scanned the card you will get the information about the card. I don't believe there is actually a way to view bits on a magnetic strip of a credit card.

    I think if you manage to create an implant that operates using NFC and can emulate specificly Samsung or Apple Pay in order to conserve power use. So you would need a board and NFC connection that can be implanted instead of just a capsule.

    I'm not 100% on the credit card info but it is what I have been told.

    Someone with more hardware and software will be able to help more.
  • Also I would be interested if you did succeed in the creation seeing how I don't carry cash and want to do away with my physical wallet
  • I've seen the Coin card before, I was thinking about getting one actually. 

    Again, I think that there has been discussion of emulated nfc payment methods. I feel that it would be near impossible to emulate something such as Apple/Android Pay. All of that is proprietary code/not open for public development.

    The coin card seems to be doing something similar. It is emulating your normal credit cards with those magnetic strips on the back.

    Regardless, the appeal of this system is that it requires next to nothing to make, whereas emulating an nfc system would be quite a bit more hardware and software intensive. Also just like Samsung Pay and the Coin Card, they could work on any machine, regardless of nfc capabilities. 

    You should check out the video on the hackaday post, it is quite interesting.

    As far as I can tell, he was actually able to see the bits on the back of the card

    image
  • I've been thinking about this too, but I feel like by the time someone is able to get an rfid/nfc payment rig working, tech companies like Biyo that dont require implants would have scaled/started to scale. It sucks but rfid/nfc implants will still be super useful for unlocking things and exchanging bits of info, which is great.
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