relative to the offense of use of scanning device or reencoder to defraud.
Summary
HB 1175 updates New Hampshire’s criminal law on the offense of using a scanning device or reencoder to defraud. Under current law, the offense covered the unauthorized reading or copying of information from the magnetic strip or stripe of a payment card. This bill expands that prohibition to also cover information encoded on an integrated circuit chip, reflecting the use of chip-enabled payment cards in modern fraud schemes.
The bill makes it a crime to knowingly use a scanning device to access, read, obtain, memorize, or store information from a payment card’s magnetic strip/stripe or integrated circuit chip without permission and with intent to defraud the cardholder, issuer, or merchant. It also extends the reencoder provision so that transferring information from one card’s magnetic strip/stripe or chip onto another card is covered when done without permission and with fraudulent intent. The effective date is January 1, 2027.
Impact
HB 1175 amends RSA 638:29, the statute governing use of a scanning device or reencoder to defraud, by expressly adding integrated circuit chip data to the existing magnetic strip/stripe language. This broadens the scope of the criminal offense to match current payment-card technology and gives prosecutors a clearer basis to charge chip-card skimming and reencoding conduct. The bill is expected to have no fiscal impact on revenue, but it may affect judicial and correctional system costs depending on enforcement and prosecution activity.
Sentiment
The available materials suggest the bill was generally noncontroversial and technical in nature, aimed at updating the criminal code to address modern payment-card fraud. There are no recorded committee transcript snippets or votes showing organized opposition, and the bill advanced with bipartisan sponsorship. The fiscal note also frames the measure as a statutory update rather than a major policy shift.
Contention
The main policy issue is not whether fraud should be prohibited, but whether the statute should be updated to include chip-based payment cards in addition to magnetic stripes. Any concern would likely center on the practical enforcement and cost implications noted in the fiscal note, which says impacts on prosecution, incarceration, probation, and parole costs are indeterminable. No specific opposition from stakeholders is documented in the provided materials, and the bill appears to have been treated as a straightforward modernization of existing fraud law.
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