RFID, short for Radio-Frequency Identification, is a fast-growing technology that has a huge impact on the financial world.
It’s an identification system that relies on a tiny chip that stores data and shares information with electronic scanners.
Using electromagnetic fields rather than traditional bar code technology, RFID allows for a quick, simple, and more efficient exchange of information.
While RFID has many applications in a wide variety of industries — from automated tollbooths to inventory scanning — its presence in the financial sector has revolutionized the way banks and payment apps do business. Here’s how:
In-Bank Security
On-site security is crucial for financial institutions. Not only do many of the top banks store money in protected vaults, but they also store confidential financial information given to them by customers, investors, and businesses.
While an in-person security team can help keep eyes on front-facing staff and customers, a more sophisticated system is needed for back-of-house operations.
Enabling your ID card system with RFID-based technology can simplify your security. A prox ID card can be embedded with data (like an employee number) that gives its users access to spaces or digital files.
You can control who has access to these confidential areas and when, ensuring only those with authorization can enter a room, vault, or electronic server. These ID badges are also contactless, making it easy to keep social distance in banks where remote work is impossible.
A sophisticated ID printer system for financial companies can produce prox cards at impressive speeds, easily keeping up with the demands of a busy financial institution. Each time, it prints a flawless ID card, ready to be put to use.
Contactless Payments
Beyond the physical security of financial institutions, RFID technology has reinforced the security behind popular bank and credit cards.
It used to be that a consumer had to swipe their card in a POS system to exchange financial information, but cards embedded with RFID-technology can electronically share this data. People with the newest generations of bank and credit cards can simply hover their card over the appropriate reader to pay for a purchase.
There are claims that this easy exchange is a cause for concern. A criminal with the right card reader can scan these RFID chips just by standing close enough to their victim.
However, there has yet to be any documented case where this is true. As Roger A. Grimes of CSO reports, there are too many obstacles standing in the way of your data for it to happen — from the physical distance between your fraudster to the interference caused by other cards and items in your wallet or purse.
In most cases, you need to be within centimetres of the ID card reader without any other cards standing in the way. Even if you removed all the interference, you would probably notice a thief standing that close.
As the use of RFID technology expands in the financial world and beyond, so will your questions about it. This is only a brief guide to what RFID has done to simplify security in finances — keep researching to find out more about this revolutionary technology.
