Smart Card Wallet
A smart card wallet is a hardware wallet in bank-card form: a secure element on a card, used by tapping it to a phone over NFC.
What Is a Smart Card Wallet?
A smart card wallet puts the keys on a secure element inside a card the size of a bank card. Examples include Tangem, Keycard and Satochip. The card has no battery, screen or buttons; it is powered and operated by tapping it to a phone with NFC, or through a separate reader.
Cards are cheap, thin and durable, and several can serve as backups of one another. The main trade-off is the missing screen: the transaction details and address are shown by the phone app, so the card cannot independently confirm what it signs, unless it is used with a reader device that has its own display.
Card wallets often use a seedless backup scheme, with an optional recovery phrase on some models.
A secure element is a tamper-resistant chip built to store secrets and resist physical attacks such as side-channel analysis and fault injection.
Read full definitionTangem is a hardware wallet in the form of a physical card that stores cryptocurrency private keys securely and offline, allowing for easy and portable access to digital assets.
Read full definitionNFC Connectivity in cryptocurrency enables contactless transactions using near-field communication, allowing users to sign or authorize actions by tapping their device to a reader.
Read full definitionA backup in cryptocurrency is a secure copy of a wallet's seed phrase or private keys. It enables recovery of funds if the original wallet is lost or damaged.
Read full definitionA seedless wallet is backed up without a written recovery phrase, using extra devices, multisig or key shares instead.
Read full definitionA mnemonic phrase is a set of words that stores a cryptocurrency wallet's private keys, allowing users to recover access if lost.
Read full definitionReal-World Examples
Example 1: A user taps a card to their phone to sign a transfer; the details are shown only in the phone app.
Example 2: A household keeps two backup cards in different places in case the main card is lost.
A Recovery Card is a physical card or sheet for backing up a cryptocurrency wallet's seed phrase, enabling recovery if the original wallet is lost or damaged.
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