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SoK: Security of EMV Contactless Payment Systems

Published: April 17, 2025 | arXiv ID: 2504.12812v1

By: Mahshid Mehr Nezhad , Feng Hao , Gregory Epiphaniou and more

Potential Business Impact:

Finds ways to make contactless payments safer.

Business Areas:
Mobile Payments Financial Services, Mobile, Payments, Software

The widespread adoption of EMV (Europay, Mastercard, and Visa) contactless payment systems has greatly improved convenience for both users and merchants. However, this growth has also exposed significant security challenges. This SoK provides a comprehensive analysis of security vulnerabilities in EMV contactless payments, particularly within the open-loop systems used by Visa and Mastercard. We categorize attacks into seven attack vectors across three key areas: application selection, cardholder authentication, and transaction authorization. We replicate the attacks on Visa and Mastercard protocols using our experimental platform to determine their practical feasibility and offer insights into the current security landscape of contactless payments. Our study also includes a detailed evaluation of the underlying protocols, along with a comparative analysis of Visa and Mastercard, highlighting vulnerabilities and recommending countermeasures.

Repos / Data Links

Page Count
25 pages

Category
Computer Science:
Cryptography and Security