Patent attributes
A card reader's motorized transport is controlled by firmware of the reader so as to control a distance that any card can be pulled into the reader during a transaction on a host device. The distance is sufficient enough to allow an embedded chip on the card to be read by a chip read interface but is insufficient to be read by a magnetic read interface. Furthermore, the entire length of the card is prevented from completely passing over the magnetic read interface during the transaction such that any skimmer placed within the reader is physically unable to read the magnetic card information from the magnetic strip of the card. In an embodiment, the firmware is configured to permit only chips from the cards to be read for transactions or configured to turn off chip only reading by permitting both chip reads and magnetic strip reads for each transaction.
