What is a Faraday Wallet and Should I buy one?

Debit and credit cards are important in the modern world and we would never look to give out our financial information. With the rise of contactless payments though, credit and debit card theft is easier than ever before. Faraday wallets were designed to protect your information being stolen without your knowledge.

Before a would-be thief would have to employ tactics such as skimming numbers from credit card machines or cash machines involving a lot of work. Nowadays, however, the smarter criminal can take your details just by standing next to you.

The RFID chip inside your card that lets you make payments by swiping them on top of the machine for you convenience makes them easy targets to be scanned by someone else. What if your wallet is in your back pocket and someone walks up to you with a scanner? Theoretically, they could take sensitive information and allow them to use that information without your consent.

What is a RFID Faraday Wallet and how does it work?

RFID chips have been implemented into a wide variety of things from passports, a microchip for pets and your underground pass to get onto the train. They work by communicating via an RFID reader which uses radio waves to read the information on the chip which contains small electromagnetic fields.

Due to it working in proximity, there is nothing stopping someone from being just close by enough to read those little electromagnetic fields and it has happened before. This is where the RFID blocking Faraday wallet comes into play as the chips are quite easy to block with the correct material. If you encase your wallet to be a Faraday Cage, it will block the electromagnetic signals between a chip and reader.

Put simply, the Faraday cage for a wallet would be a mesh material with small wires of conductive material such as copper, nickel or silver. This would be the makings of the wallet creating the Faraday cage effect. As external electronic fields cause charges around the exterior of the mesh and distribute it, it cancels out the charge or radiation within the meshes interior.

This makes the Faraday wallet able to block external signals, stopping any attacker being able to scan your cards which contain the RFID chips. These are perfect for people who are security conscious, hold sensitive information in their wallet or work within security services, police or government.

You can find out where to buy your own RFID Faraday Wallet from our range of Faraday products.