Article: Write article on custom credit card investigation

[JasonYao]

Overview

Basically, my investigative journey into how I could get a customized metal credit card that retained contactless payments, something that no current customized credit card does, since they just extract a given card's EMV chip and copy over the magnetic strip data.

Contactless payment mechanisms require the original antennas/NFC chip setup, which requires either:

• A mechanism for identifying and extracting the NFC chip out, and recreating the antenna and capacitor setup for the card
• Extracting out the original setup and sticking it into a new custom card

Approaches to extracting out the antennas and metal layer in between the PVC:

1. Use some kind of PVC solvent
2. Use heat (double boiler would do)

Talk about safety for experimentation

• N95 Mask
• Outdoors environment or using the fume hood (might be able to ask using some of the fume hoods in NYU?)

Talk about the experiment

1. Identify some kind of PVC solvent that I can leave the credit card in to dissolve over time without hopefully damaging the metal contacts/EMV chip/NFC chip
2. Basically, use a propane tank with camper burner and a double boiler setup to use heated steam to transfer heat to the card until it's malleable/becomes viscous

Talk about success criteria

• Once the metal layer is extracted out, see if sticking it to cardboard and then used in OMNY transit network works as expected

[JasonYao]

Note: there's a youtube video on some people dissolving plastics using acetone, where it took about 3.5min -> 10 min to dissolve 8 ft of plastics.

Considering that acetone as a solvent shouldn't affect metals, it might be a cheap and easy way to start from a solvent point of view, without having to worry about damage to the metal contact layer (going to need a better name for this layer in the future)