NFC EMV Explorer

Eugene Lishak

About this app

Are you curious? Do you want to know:
- How contactless EMV really works? How risky is it to use cEMV cards and keep them in your pocket?
- What data is exchanged between the card reader and the card, and how much time does it take?
- How fast are recently issued cards compared to older ones—Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, etc.—as well as old and new smartphones when they emulate cards in Google, Apple, etc. wallets?

With our NFC EMV Explorer, you will get all this info down to the last bit and millisecond.

Install the app, tap a card, and you will see a formatted text output on your phone that looks like this:

---
**Card Summary**
PAN (or Device PAN for Google/Apple/etc. wallets) retrieved from: GPO APDU
Card read on 2025/05/22 at 13:18:53
Total session time: 477 ms
Total net IsoDep APDU transceive time: 440 ms
IsoDep APDU transceive time for GPO: 105 ms
Total data received from card: 858 bytes
Effective transceive speed: 15.6 kbit/s
*Directories:*
0. AID: a0000000031010, Label: "Visa Credit", Kernel ID: absent
Directory #0 was used in this tap
**End of Card Summary**

Retrieved PAN or DPAN: 454545454545454545

**APDU Request:**
00a404000e325041592e5359532e444446303100
Select PPSE APDU. Transceive Time = 25 ms. SW1/SW2: 9000
**APDU Response Content:**
6f - FCI Template, length = 45
84 - Dedicated File Name, length = 14
325041592e5359532e4444463031
"2PAY.SYS.DDF01"
a5 - FCI Proprietary Template, length = 27
bf0c - FCI Issuer Discretionary Data, length = 24
61 - Directory Entry, length = 22
4f - ADF Name, length = 7
a0000000031010
"ﾠ??????"
50 - …
and so on, in a colorful formatted text display. See our screenshots in the app description (don't worry, you will see the card PAN).

You will see APDU commands for:
- Select PPSE “2PAY.SYS.DDF01”
- Select Application ID (ADF)
- Get Processing Options (GPO) issued with a valid PDOL
- Read Record for all records specified in the Application File Locator (AFL)
- Generate Application Cryptogram (AC), when applicable, issued with a valid CDOL1. This one is useful for assessing the card’s Offline Data Authentication (ODA) capability.

The output data is presented in EMV Tag structured form.

Apart from regular plastic cards, you can also explore virtual cards in Google, Apple Pay, etc., wallets in phones and watches.

The app works with multi-application cards, processing another directory entry (EMV Tag 61) with each additional tap.

Tested schemes: Visa, Mastercard, Interac, eftpos (Australia). AmEx is partially tested.

The app does not require any Android permissions. Therefore, it cannot store or upload any data. The app copies the card data to the clipboard, so you can discard it or paste it into any application you trust (e.g., email).

Before making the decision to purchase this app for a few bucks, you can try the free NFC EMV Explorer - Entry Level, which presents limited data:
(https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wwopenfare.freereadnfccard)

What’s new

Added raw APDU requests in the output