Why Does My Credit Card Have a Hole in It?

How long do you sit there with your arms crossed staring at the camera before you start your "hay everyone"??

I actually discovered how to disable RFID/NFC cards the hard way when one day I got the idea, "Hey, what if I hole punch the corner of my badge so I can put it on my keychain?"

Hahaha, I ran into this with smart card access. Our maintenance guys drilled holes in their access cards, to loop a string thru for a lanyard, which nuked the card. So we had to hand out card pouches with lanyards so they would stop punching holes thru the cards.

It may be silly, sure. But as someone who hissed at a goose (it hissed at me first) because I wanted to establish dominance and make it move off the sidewalk I was on (I worked), im a firm believer in "it ain't stupid if it works"

I think there was a guide in a German tech magazine a while ago on how to disable NFC, and they advised checking with the lamp and then cutting away next to the pads with an exacto knife

I quite like the idea of drilling a hole to disable the antenna. It reminds me of that early Xbox 360 hack that involved carefully drilling into the DVD drive's controller chip to cut a line inside the chip to enable flashing of custom drive firmware that allowed loading of copied discs. Companies even made jigs that sat over the chip, to allow super precise drilling - and if you drilled too deep, or in the wrong spot, you killed the drive.

Also useful for if you want to protect your card from RFID/NFC sniffers paced near payment terminals. An RFID blocking wallet is useful at protecting the cards normally, but won’t protect if the shady gas station attendant hid a reader right under the counter where you remove your card from the shielding of the wallet.

Also I'm pretty sure Samsung Pay predates Apple Pay, and was significant in that they held the patent on using the wireless charging coil as a magstripe emulating transmitter. Back before NFC payment was ubiquitous and I daily drove a Note5 I would routinely have cashiers say "oh, sorry we don't take Apple Pay" as I held it up to their stripe reader for it to then beep and accept it anyway. It really gave off the "I am a technowizard" vibe.

The first tap-to-pay debit card I got here in Australia in the 2000s was clear plastic on the back, so you could see the little copper wires of the antenna doing laps around the circumference. I don't have any NFC enabled on my phone so I don't need to mod my card.

As an electrician in Australia, my drivers licence has a chip on it no ever uses.... Never got in trouble if it never worked; so we just smash 1000V DC across it with our test tools lol.

As a Capital One rep, I wish I could recommend this video to certain callers. Also wish we were able to request non tap to pay enabled cards still... And no this does not violate any agreement. <3

I believe the reason EMV chips caught on all of a sudden in the US was because the rules changed. Before, the issuing bank was always responsible for handling fraud. But now, if the merchant doesn’t accept the card’s most secure payment method, then the merchant is responsible for any fraud. So they scrambled to support chips. If only it had come a year later, all the merchants would have scrambled to support NFC.

Hi Deviant! Indeed, phone-based payments do work even if the device doesn't have connectivity. It's all about the secret token that's needed to perform the handshake between the terminal and the card. I saw a video about the NFC implants and how one YouTuber with such an implant had asked, I think Venmo, for such a secret token, so that he can program it onto his implant and pay with his hand.

Google Wallet, Android pay in 2011 and Apple Pay in 2014 were quite late entry into contactless payment. Contactless (tap and pay) systems have been around since 1995. In the county I'm in we have had contactless bank cards from 2007.

Thanks for the video. Norfolk Virginia has issues with people sitting in malls with an oversized antenna pulling $1 and $2 dollar transactions off of NFC cards. They get smart and use an in state but out of city business [ read as out of jurisdiction] address. The people are smart - they move like locus from one mall to another then onto another city. Very troublesome to prosecute. Being able to nuke the antenna and keep the chip is great. Also hearing you say "apple pay is secure" is the good house keeping seal of approval.

Android Pay (the predecessor Google Pay) was around in 2012. There was even a promotion to use it where you would get a small credit (it was like 5-10 dollars) to use it. I had used it a few times with my Nexus 7tablet to redeem that credit at McDonalds. Apple Pay didn't roll around till 2 years later in 2014. Regardless, like you I hated that I was thrust into having tap and pay cards because my phone picks them up, but I am not brave enough to try and do what you have done here. I just try and keep my wallet and phone air gapped a few inches.

I had an indentation made into a access badge once by the card holder, just where the antenna was. Hardly noticeable, killed the NFC entirely

Never thought of using a bright light to see where the antenna is. I don't have a need to disable the RFID on any of my cards, but it's still interesting to see. Cards from different banks also seem to us different layouts for the traces. (Also I'm now partially blind from my Nitecore MH12 on full blast accidentally peeking out from behind the edge of a card)

I was worried this was going to be a weird paranoid thing at the start. This is actually really cool. Thanks for the tip!

I see your camera quality has now by leaps and bounds better video quality than the older videos you had. The audio is clipping quite a lot, so maybe re-check the mic amp settings and post-processing filters?