#technology #onlineshopping #onlineshop #onlinepayment

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Originally shared by EuroTech

The Convenient Bank Combicard For Your Wallet
by Sophie Wrobel, EuroTech; Germany

Monte Paschi’s latest bank card lineup presents a solution that convenience shoppers will love: an all-in-one bank card for credit card, debit card, cash card, and online transaction generator combined into one integrated piece of plastic.

Features:
• Credit card (Mastercard) functionality, including magnetic stripe, card number, and signature strip
• Debit card (Maestro) functionality, including electronic chip and card number
• NFC chip for contact-free payment
• Integrated TAN generator for online purchases

One secure step backwards?
Perhaps the most striking “feature” about this card is its integrated Transaction Number (TAN) generator. Online shoppers across Europe are no stranger to the TAN generation, which involves using a physical device to generate a unique transaction number based on some details from the transaction, date/time, and a key located on the physical hardware. That combination provides for additional security, and additional consumer annoyance.

The Combicard provides that magic number from a push button – without the need to enter transactional data. While that still requires a physical device and not just a memorized passphrase, there is no transaction-specific data involved in the TAN generation, and as such we’re back to the security level of indexed TANs (iTANS), in which consumers selected a TAN from a printed out sheet of paper with a long list of TANs on it. The problem there, of course, is that an evil party could, with sufficient computing power and stolen knowledge, compute the TAN list – but a transaction-specific data seed, the window in which the TAN is valid would be too small for a hacker to compute and use the TAN.

Convenience vs. security
We can probably expect the general population welcoming this new line of cards: consumers want convenience. And most people don’t understand the security mechanism, and therefore also not how, or why, the new card could be somewhat less secure.

Website: www.montepaschi.be/en/PaschiCombo.html
Tags: #ScienceEveryday
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