DIY RFID Shield Wallet
Although Contactless cards on Transport for London (Tfl) have benefits like daily and weekly caps, they unfortunately don’t support Monthly or Yearly travelcards for which you still need an Oyster card. However with contactless becoming more and more of a standard on credit and debit cards, card clash seems inevitable as TfL always reminds you.
Before switching from contactless to Oyster I really enjoyed just tapping my wallet on the card reader on busses and in stations without opening it or pulling out the card. Since switching to Oyster to benefit from a travelcard I’ve been meaning to find a way to have my wallet shield the cards on the inside while letting me still tap my Oyster for travel.
My first attempt was to simply use aluminium foil from the kitchen and place it in the inner pocket where banknotes go. I would have my bank cards on the inside and the oyster in the outer banknote pocket, outside of the “shield”.
It didn’t work, and it took a little googling and reading papers to understand why.
So I ordered a sheet of adhesive rubber ferrite off of ebay for £ 2.95, cut it to fit my walley and stuck a layer of aluminium foil on the side.
Tried it for a week on busses and station gates and it works like a charm. I still have to pull out my card to pay for coffee but find that acceptable. It adds a little bit of weight and thickess to my wallet but I don’t mind too much.
If you can’t be bothered to make this or are bothered by the thickness you can shell out some £ for wallets that address this exact problem. The wallet in the pictures is made of Cork and sold by the good folks at Corkor.
There are tons of wallets, backpacks and even jeans that are supposed to protect you from RFID and NFC crime. Whether it is a serious threat is debatable but if you’re feeling like being on the safer side then it’s easy to create a shield with plain aluminium foil. Just don’t get too carried away.
