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How do Contactless Mobile Payments Work

Contactless Payments:

Contactless payment is a wireless payment process in which the customer authorizes monetary compensation for purchase by moving a security token close to the vendor’s point of sale reader.

Contactless payment systems are credit cards, debit cards, key fobs, smart cards, or other devices, including smartphones and other mobile devices, that use near field communication (NFC) or radio-frequency identification (RFID) for making secure payments.

After the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2019 to June 2020, the use of contactless payments rose 150 %. Now people feel more comfortable with tap-and-go payment methods.

Major financial institutions & multinational corporations now offer contactless payment systems to customers as contactless credit cards have become widespread in the few countries U.S, U.K, Japan, Germany, Canada, Australia, France, and the Netherlands.

What is NFC?

Contactless mobile payment systems are based on near-field communications (NFC, e.g., Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Fitbit Pay, or any mobile bank application that supports contactless). NFC technology is most commonly used for payment gateway, coupon downloads, and exchanges in business cards.

How does NFC work?

NFC has something to do work with radio signals and magnetic fields.

For example, your smartphone’s NFC-enabled devices are equipped with NFC chips with loop antennas.

Using a radio wave of 13.56 MHz in the worldwide available unauthorized radio wave ISM band using the ISO/IEC 18000-3 air interconnection standard at data rates ranging from 106 to 424 kbit/s.

contactless mobile payments process can be broken down into five simple steps:

Step 1: The merchant prompts a customer to make a payment.
Step 2: The customer opens the mobile app / contactless payment system and pays.
Step 3: Information transmits via the microchip to the customer’s bank.
Step 4: The system accepts or denies the transmission.
Step 5: Acceptance confirmation is usually signaled with a checkmark, noise, or green light.

Resources:

https://www.fscb.com/blog/what-is-contactless-payment-and-how-does-it-work
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-field_communication
https://www.cardswitcher.co.uk/contactless-payment-by-mobile-phone/

Disclaimer:

Wherever any material is quoted as sourced from the published text with publishing rights vested in an individual, it is stated that it is a pure quotation and has no intention to claim it as our own.

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