I'm not 100% on this but...
I believe that 'chipped' credit cards and "RFID capable" credit cards are two different technologies. RFID is made to be interropgated wirelessly.

The 'chipped' cards are part of a system that creates a unique transaction id that is encrypted from the cc machine to the cc company servers - decreasing the likelihood that card numbers/payment info/your data can be stolen in transit (say, by hacking the network that services the card reader).

(I think the chipped cards required a user PIN to start a transaction...a big security increase from the current US credit card system

I'm sure that a chipped card can be RFID capable at the same time, but I would imagine that there are non-RFID cards that are chipped. Theoretically, even an RFID capable card could be 'chipped' - which would present the same challenges to hackers as a magentic striped chipped card.

Like I said, I'm not 100% on this, nor am I going to use an RFID card if I can help it, but I think that the chip-encryption and RFID technologies are 2 different animals.

-John

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