Victoria Police Want To Ban Contactless Card Payments

How’s this for some financial anti-futurism? Victoria Police say that they’re tired of cleaning up banking fraud cases in the wake of easy to use, tap-and-go contactless payments like those offered by PayPass and payWave that have “totally slack” security. As a result, the cops want the payment methods straight-up banned. Boooooo.

The Herald Sun reports that the police are fed up with having to “clean up” the mess left by contactless fraud.

Assistant Commissioner Steve Fontana of the Victoria Police said:

Retailers and some of the businesses like financial institutions, they introduce practices, new innovations, without any regard to security. And then we get a run of crime and we say ‘well, why are we mopping up after their poor practices,’ to be quite frank. We won’t walk away from investigating crime – that’s our job – but don’t make it that easy for people and then expect us to come and mop up.

The banking industry won’t walk away from these contactless methods, because they say that it’s quick and convenient for customers.

The Assistant Commissioner added, however, that criminals are now breaking into more cars, stealing more mail and lifting more wallets in order to get access to cards with contactless capabilities. That way, they can allegedly rack up loads of purchases before the card is reported stolen.

Fontana had a laundry list of gripes with various retailers using slack security around contactless cards, and we recommend you read the full article to see his complaints.

Is this enough to get you to stop using contactless cards?


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.