This concept of a digital account held by someone in the cloud, what makes it special? A payment (credit or debit) card is simply a token that conveys to the merchant the data (PAN) necessary to access an account held or offered by a Financial Institution. "Held" read checking account, current account or some form of account where Money is recorded as belonging to someone. "Offered" read Line of Credit, loan or other method of extending credit.

It is fair to say that the Token or payment card is no longer secure. The physical features (hologram, Infra Red Ink, special fonts and characters) and the electronic features (magnetic
Stripe) that protected these tokens are now easy to counterfeit. EMV offers a digital means of protecting the token by creating a cryptographic method of securing the token.

People speak of the cloud and I begin to wonder. Did they forget “Big Brother” and George Orwell’s “1984”? Did we forget Snowden and the reality that Big Brother is watching? Do we believe that our data or our digital accounts are more secure because they are in the Cloud available to criminals who like to hack into Systems and harvest data? Remember all those “secure” personal celebrity photos got hacked and distributed everywhere. Photos stored in the cloud.

Or do we like the idea that our cards or maybe our phone can continue to carry a secure means of accessing our digital accounts. Cards and phones, we carry in our pocket is something we can individually secure and carry safely?

Just a question.