What Is RFID and When Is It Especially Important?
There is a vast selection of different wallets in the market at the moment. Some follow the conventional design with dedicated card slots, cash and coin pockets, others follow a more minimalistic approach and slim down size to achieve a more comfortable fit.
However, there is one key functionality that can be not as obvious and is actually not even seen at the first glance. It is the RFID blocking layer that is integrated in the wallets to protect your card data from being stolen and misused.
But let us first clear out what even RFID itself means.
RFID - Radio-Frequency Identification
With the development of modern credit/debit cards, contactless payments are getting a broader popularity and these payments are possible with the insertion of the RFID chips into the credit cards, which transfer the required payment data from your card to the POS terminal when you make the payment. This means that you do not need to enter your card pin code but the payment is just made over the air.
In most of the cases this is a very neat and useful feature. There are many examples from paying for the groccery shopping or at the gas stations that using the contactless payments can dramatically reduce the queue lines, but it can also be misused by others.
It has often been reported that data thieves were using small POS devices and recently even simply their mobiles to still sentitive card information. This can happen anywhere from subway stations to other crowded places where the criminals can come close enough without drawing too much attention. The necessary distance to read data from RFID chips is normally from up to 20-30cm and they can simply hold the reading devices in their backpack so that you do not notice it. This is why we think that it is an absolute must that your wallet has the blocking layer to stop any unwanted access to your personal data.
To combat this issue we have equipped all of our wallets with a special layer that would block any RFID data transmission from your cards to external devices. As security is in the core of our product design process, producing a modern wallet without this layer would simply be a no-go anymore. Therefore we strongly recommend to make sure the wallet you eventually decide to buy has it integrated.
Below as a YouTube video from "The Modern Rogue" channel illustrating such a case and its consequences.