RFID in Japan

As the number of RFID cards (e.g., SUICA, Edy, etc.) increases in the wallets of Japanese consumers, this e-commerce site highly recommends anti-skimming wallets as this year's Mother's Day gift. It also recommends metal ("faraday cage") card cases with different textures for paranoid moms with different aesthetic preferences.

Anyway -- the main story is about something similar but a bit more technologically sophisticated. A company called Taiyo (located in Shibukawa city, Gunma prefecture) recently developed a super thin (0.4mm) credit card size device for skimming protection. Consumers put it on top of RFID cards to prevent the cards from secretly read by strangers etc. It's called "Skimming Card" (though I would rather call it "Anti-Skimming Card"). What's interesting about it is in how it works -- When (Anti-)Skimming Cards are exposed to electro-magnetic fields created by RFID readers, they create excess electric current in it and actively create "reverse" electro-magnetic fields that is approximately the same strengths as the readers' fields, thereby, prevents RFID readers to read RFID cards. It will be available in May. (Not sure in time for Mother's Day or not though)

via Nikkei Shimbun, April 15, 2005, in Japanese

Posted by konomi at April 21, 2005 11:00 PM | TrackBack