Is anyone familiar with iCard NFC fobs

I was in the same boat, Amal asked for a couple for contingency, but could only do One at a time, I was just lucky he was able to do a successful conversion on the first try, after my 2 “practice” ones

No problem

I have left it soaking in Acetone overnight, I’ll check on it tomorrow and let you know the results.

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:+1: good news

If the iCard is made from the same materials as my transport tag (looks like it visually) I THINK it should be a possible conversion for Amal.

I guess the deciding factor will be the antenna pF capacitance for your iCard

PROCESS (For Amals purposes)
I placed the tag in a glass and put in about 60ml of acetone, I covered with glad wrap (cerran wrap?) to stop the evaporation of the acetone.
It took a little longer than my payment one because of the laquer and the type of plastic on the outside, but it worked its way through the edges via capillary action and dissolved the laminate layers from within.
It took about a day soaking, but, like a nice tender lamb shank, The plastic just “fell off the bone”

Here are the photos

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send to me as-is and i will test. i need the antenna intact for my first test.

Ah yes, sorry I didn’t make that clear. (fixed)
The process was for Amal, I am not sure if he had done one in that fob encapsulation format before. but he probably has!
My testing above was for feasibility to find the best /easiest way for him to access the chip and antenna without damage, to save him time and you money.

I am working on another one at the moment, very different form factor that a few chemicals have had no affect so far

Hello, I already contacted iCard regarding the expiry date:

So good news for everybody, the expiration date can be set to 2099.
The reason why I contacted iCard is because my contactless payment keyfob is manufactured by LAKS (Key2pay MINI). Many others who also want contactless payment implants aren’t a customer of ABN AMRO, but LAKS also produces contactless payment keyfobs for other companies, such as iCard.
So if you order one, ask for the key2pay mini from LAKS because that one is sim card sized and easy to convert to implant for Amal.

Vicarious

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Thanks for this info! I wouldn’t think of messing around with the fob itself but I’m sure it’s helpful for Amal. I’ll get on getting the account set up and ordering the fob to send over.

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Awesome! I will write to them and as for a 2099 fob to send to Amal. This could be a pretty sweet payment solution if it works, and by the time it needs replacing we’ll all be riding around in flying cars or the aliens would’ve killed us all. Thank you for the info!

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With all these payment installs not available on the states, I’m seriously looking at seeing if I can open up a bank account overseas so I can get one of these in me.

Could you update this if the 2099 thing is something they’ll do, or if it’s just a hypothetical?

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Me too :confused:

I have a icard that @amal converted from lakspay. And that was a desfire card.

naa, it only read as a desfire… it’s a smartcard running a standard javacard payment applet from mastercard. it also has desfire emulation turned on for no particular reason.

So, let’s see if I understand correctly here - because I’m a bit of a thickie when it comes to number of actors and who does what in the craptastic world of electronic payment:

  • LAKS Pay physically manufactures the fancy schmancy payment tags - as in, they grab a blank chip and encase it in some support.
  • iCards, ABN AMRO, KBC… program the LAKS Pay devices in their super-secret finance villain’s lairs. They decide which expiry date to program in the device.
  • Of the lot, only iCards agrees to set the expiry date far enough in the future that it’s as good as non-expiring.
  • Amal could very well send a suitable blank implant directly to iCards for programming, but we have to go through the ridiculous rigmarole of ordering a tag from LAKS Pay, send it to Amal for creative deconstruction and repurposing into an implant, then have Amal send it back to us because only LAKS Pay has the finance villains’ seal of approval.

Did I get that right, more or less?

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hard to take a company seriously when their name sounds like both Lacks Pay and Lax Pay

I don’t know, ever since I started patronizing a company called Dangerous Things, I tend to overlook these things.

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I’m lucky that I’m a customer of ABN AMRO then, because according to an employee of my bank, their ‘wearables’ don’t expire. It’s linked to my bank debit card using a token, so when my current bank debit card expires, I guess I just have to link the payment fob again to the new debit card through the mobile banking app.

I’m a Nordea customer, which LAKS supports. Maybe I should ask them if LAKS wearables expire. Logic would dictate that they don’t, as I can’t see a bank forcing their customers to blow money on a new fancy gadget for nothing every 2 years - particularly since the gadget in question might become the object of personal attachment or something. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

EDIT: I’ve shot an email to LAKS. They should know. Nordea is a bit of a bureaucratic behemoth. I’ll never get a straight answer from them.

Ok… so to make this quick I recorded a video…

My question is - if I set up a Patreon and made videos like this, covering various subjects etc. would that be interesting enough to people to set up a Patreon channel for? The goal of having a Patreon channel itself would always be to raise funds for more lab hardware… probably the first goal would be to get a small scale EO gas sterliizer for the lab… for example.

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Thanks Amal. Very informative!

Re Patreon, I’m not keen as you know (not the paying, the setting an account). But I might just be convinced, because your videos are worth it. I’d much rather you set up a donate button in your webshop though :slight_smile:

So, what I take out of this, there is just no way to get a card with a long expiry date anywhere, ever. Therefore iCards basically lied to Vicarious, yes? Or it was a very VERY special one-off offer, as a kind of experiment, with the explicit agreement of Mastercard - which I doubt.

But I have me an idea to solve the conundrum for VK:

So let’s say VK wants to play on the EMV network and not bend the expiry date rule, or have the rules rewritten. Since the cards need to be programmed in a secure environemt, here’s the idea: VK puts out implants with a regular expiry date, and when it’s about to expire, instead of having to scalpel it out and replace it, the implant holder goes to a EMV-approved VK facility, enter a locked booth, puts their arm through a kind of gloryhole, and the EMV-certified boffins on the other side re-provision the implant, or modify the expiry date or whatever it is that can’t be done outside of a secure environment.

No blood, no pain. All VK has to do is 1/ convince EMV that a chip can be reprogrammed instead of throwing it away, and 2/ set up a few secure gloryhole-equiped facilities around the world. Easy, right? :slight_smile:

I’m joking of course. But seriously, if a scheme like that existed, and there was, say, only 2 or 3 such facilities for the whole of Europe, I would go to the trouble of flying to one of them to have my implant “refreshed”. If it’s every 4 years, it would be quite acceptable. And if the facility was located in an interesting city, it would even make a nice city trip.

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This could technically be possible, however it costs a lot… a. lot. to create a facility like this and get certification, PCI compliance, etc.

I think whoever responded possibly simply didn’t understand the difference between the lack of technical limitation vs a policy limitation.