Looks like the fast food chain that took the longest to accept credit cards is going to be the first to jump on the RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) train. When I spotted an RFID reader at a lake-side McDonald’s, I asked the employee if it was for a company branded key chain or for MasterCard, whom is now pushing its own RFID feature, to which she replied, “I have no idea what those are.” Not wanting to get into a deep technology explanation of what her employer was offering, I simply smiled and walked away.

A quick search on the Internet finds many references to McDonald’s announcing the RFID roll-out in late 2004 but little follow up can be found. As is with many new technologies, the release date may have slipped and the Verifone readers are now just beginning to be seen on a wide spread basis. MasterCard’s PayPass technology is what this particular restaurant was using as will all others in the chain.

“McDonald’s is always looking for new and innovative ways to use technology to improve customer service in our restaurants,” said Jim Sappington, vice president of information technology, McDonald’s U.S.A. “The convenience of MasterCard PayPass will help our customers get their Big Macs, Premium Salads and Happy Meals even faster.”

Guess our neck of the woods is a bit behind where we are vacationing here at SvenOnTech, but hey, we wouldn’t use the insecure technology anyway. With a Silicon Valley security company showing that it can clone a key fob by just walking by a person, we feel better using our actual credit card. Takes just as long for authorization to take place for the old skool magnet strip card so it’s no biggy to us.

Oh ya, those implanted RFID chips have also been cloned, too. So our advice is just don’t use RFID. Meaning, get your passport renewed now before the October cut off which will have all future passports implanted with RFID. Joy, what a way for terrorists now to easily commit ID theft.

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