Mobile Payment Magazine

Multicard and Netherlands’ Rabobank Deploy Mobile Payment Solution

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Multicard, a leading supplier of credential solutions, identity management and system integration services is rolling out its mobile cashless payment solution with Rabobank, one of Netherland’s largest financial services companies.

Rabobank selected Multicard to provide the e-payment stickers and related services that will enable users to make purchases using their current mobile phones, directly from a virtual wallet. Multicard and Rabobank have been working closely to fine tune the solution and now are deploying it to canteens and cafeterias within Rabobank’s national network of offices.

“The vision of having an electronic wallet and simply waiving your phone in front of a terminal to purchase goods and services has become real. Rabobank and Multicard are at the leading edge of this trend, already delivering a mobile payment solution that provides security and convenience and that works with existing mobile phones. Every day, more than 1,500 people are using the application to pay for lunch or make small purchases with their mobile phones,” said Pieter Kooistra, Managing Director of Multicard Netherlands. “This virtual wallet can be accessed and managed over the Internet rather than having to be loaded with value at special banking terminals, and payments can be made using a mobile phone or a contactless token such as a key fob or wristband.”

In addition to providing personalization and fulfillment services for the program, Multicard will provide mobile phone applications to transfer money, check balance and top-up money to the wallet, as well as handle management of all transactions, incorporating Rabobank’s MiniTix payment engine. Intended for small retail transactions, MiniTix can be used by virtually anyone, regardless of the user’s mobile operator or mobile phone brand. Rabobank currently is signing up additional merchants and facilities such as schools, cafés and sport venues to participate in the program, so that participants will be able to use their existing phone stickers to pay for food, beverages, event programs and the like.

Source: Global Newswire

Qualcomm iPhone Chip to Incorporate NFC Technology

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According to two people with knowledge of the inner workings of a coming iteration of the Apple iPhone — although not necessarily the next one — a chip made by Qualcomm for the phone’s processor will also include near-field communication technology, known as NFC.

This technology enables short-range wireless communications between the phone and an NFC reader, and can be used to make mobile payments. It is unclear which version of an iPhone this technology would be built into.

via New York Times.

Merchant Warehouse Credit Card Processing Adds Mobile and Web Services

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Merchant Warehouse, a provider of merchant accounts and credit card processing solutions, now has mobile and web versions of MerchantWARE TransPort. Both TransPort.Mobile and TransPort.Web offer enhanced functionality and enhanced security features. TransPort is a hosted payment solution which eliminates the need for a PA-DSS audit for point-of-sale (POS) systems, shopping carts, websites and mobile payments. The PA-DSS audit is eliminated by delegating all of the sensitive portions of payment processing to TransPort.

TransPort enables POS developers to remove the card processing function entirely from their software while retaining full functionality through a “transaction portal” and tokenization. This is especially important for mobile payment solutions since the PCI Council has officially opted to not certify mobile applications in the near future. With TransPort.Mobile, mobile payments are secure and meet all the PA-DSS requirements. Anyone using TransPort.Mobile for mobile payments can be confident that their card data is secure.

According to Inc. magazine, global e-commerce spending is expected to grow 90 percent by 2014, and e-commerce spending in the United States is expected to reach nearly $203 billion. As consumers embrace online and mobile shopping experiences in the coming years, merchants will need to provide convenient, secure purchasing options for their customers. The challenge for many e-commerce websites is maintaining PCI compliant solutions, often because many POS providers use open source software architecture. Because open source software isn’t owned by one particular organization, no one is expected to pay for that architecture to go through a PA-DSS audit. As a result, many merchants are not in compliance with PCI DSS mandates and are at risk of a breach.

TransPort.Web off-loads the card processing to a PCI DSS certified server. By removing the POS software or shopping cart out of PA-DSS scope, TransPort.Web allows the merchant to operate their online store within PCI DSS regulations without incurring any additional costs. According to the company, it’s one of the most effective and efficient ways to achieve and maintain compliance and secure card holder data for e-commerce merchants.

“During this past holiday shopping period, consumers spent $30 billion, both over the Web and through their mobile devices,” said Henry Helgeson, co-CEO of Merchant Warehouse. “As consumers gravitate toward mobile payments and e-commerce shopping, the need for a secure and certified online payment solution becomes more obvious. We are excited that the new functionality in the MerchantWARE TransPort platform addresses this need today. Not only do developers have a secure, feature-rich payment platform that protects card data, it is also customizable so their merchants can extend their brand right to their client. We think TransPort.Web and TransPort.Mobile are great additions to our hosted payment solution.”

The TransPort platform, including TransPort.Web and TransPort.Mobile, offer numerous industry-leading security benefits including encrypted PIN debit, tokenization and end-to-end encryption. Additional fraud detection is available through the MagnePrint card recognition service and merchants and developers can further brand their solutions using customizable layout and color scheme options.

“Our business is unique because we process transactions in our store as well as on our website so we were looking for a solution that would satisfy all of our needs while helping secure our credit card processing,” said Roman Malko, owner of Bosmix.com. “By using TransPort.Web we were able to secure our in-store POS software as well as allow our customers to pay their invoices securely on our website. The customer card data is secure and our PCI compliance process is much less time consuming than before. I was really sold on the advanced security features like end-to-end encryption and tokenization. These don’t intrude on the customer experience and it gives me peace of mind that we are doing our due diligence to secure our customer card data.”

Source: BusinessWire

Fiserv Named “Best Electronic Commerce Provider” by Global Finance Magazine

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-Fiserv, Inc., a provider of financial services technology solutions, was named “Best Electronic Commerce Provider” by Global Finance magazine. This is the fourth year in a row that the company has been honored by the magazine.

“We are particularly honored to receive this award in the year that mobile banking has been added to the criteria, as our research shows consumers want their primary bank or credit union to also connect with them via the mobile channel.”

The award is based on 12 categories of input from industry analysts, corporate executives and technology experts. This year, a new category “mobile banking” was one on which judges selected the best-in-breed provider. Other categories on which the company was judged include volume, market share, and scope of global/regional coverage; examples of cutting edge technology deployment and product innovation on a regional/global level; and examples of regional/global solutions that delivered significant benefits and cost savings for clients wanting to re-engineer their cash management processes.

”More than 16,000 financial institutions and business around the world trust Fiserv to help them solve complex business challenges,” said Steve Olsen, group president, Digital Payments, Fiserv. “We are particularly honored to receive this award in the year that mobile banking has been added to the criteria, as our research shows consumers want their primary bank or credit union to also connect with them via the mobile channel.”

Fiserv provides its clients with traditional electronic payment solutions including debit, ACH, cards and online bill payment, as well as emerging solutions such as person-to-person payments. According to the company’s year-end 2010 earnings statement, Fiserv expanded its payments footprint by signing 537 electronic bill payment clients and 218 debit clients. The company also processed 3 of 4 online bill payments, delivered more than 330 million e-bills, managed more than 1.4 billion online bill pay transactions processed through financial institutions and has an EFT payments network with more than 1.5 million point-of-sale locations.

Source: Business Wire

ThreatMetrix Announces New Cloud-Based Fraud Prevention Platform

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ThreatMetrix, a provider of fraud prevention solutions that do not require personally identifiable information (PII), today announced the availability of the ThreatMetrix Cloud-Based Fraud Prevention Platform, which incorporates cookieless device identification and enhanced mobile authentication that makes it easy for banks, merchants, online businesses, payment gateways and payment providers to detect and screen for fraud. The comprehensive fraud platform helps companies fight online fraud during account creation, login authentication and payment authorization regardless of the device. With the growth of mobile commerce and mobile banking, there is a growing need for fraud solutions in this channel.

“The ThreatMetrix Cloud-Based Fraud Prevention Platform provides companies with the ability to authenticate payments, new accounts and returning customers online regardless of the device involved — be it a smartphone, personal or tablet computer — without requiring a forklift install of hardware or software,” said Reed Taussig, president and CEO, ThreatMetrix. “A smarter approach to device identification combined with aggregated fraud intelligence in the cloud allows customers to benefit from proactive protection without needing to share personally identifiable information.”

ThreatMetrix’s solution to cookieless device identification, called ThreatMetrix SmartID, goes beyond traditional device identification solutions by incorporating device fingerprint attributes instead of cookies, which can be wiped or blocked. ThreatMetrix SmartID, which incorporates unique TCIP/IP packet intelligence, cross correlates and scores device attributes and behavior with session and browser cookies to more accurately establish and authenticate a device identity.

“Using ThreatMetrix SmartID, ThreatMetrix provides the most effective first perimeter of defense for transaction security from cybercrime, hidden proxies, scripted attacks and cookie and browser manipulation by fraudsters,” said Taussig.

The ThreatMetrix Cloud-Based Fraud Prevention Platform

The ThreatMetrix Cloud-Based Fraud Prevention Platform includes several new features including:

  • Enterprise Risk Engine: ThreatMetrix provides real-time contextual scoring based on device, customer and transaction attributes and historic analysis through a customer configurable rules engine. Default rules and algorithms will detect many anomalies such as hidden proxies, high-risk geographies, anomalous language and time settings, potential cookie wiping and blacklisted attributes. More advanced rules allow for correlation of other transaction data such as detecting multiple identities, payment accounts or shipping addresses used by the same device, or an unusually high volume of transactions from a device across the ThreatMetrix network. ThreatMetrix rules can be updated by analysts and activated immediately to respond to changing threats.
  • Global Network Intelligence: ThreatMetrix customers benefit from anonymous and aggregated device and transaction behavior seen across the global ThreatMetrix network through both automated scoring as well as customizable fraud filters. The ThreatMetrix Cloud-Based Fraud Prevention Platform provides proactive protection that gets smarter with every customer and transaction without, requiring extensive manual input.
  • Queue Management: Manual review of transactions is time consuming and expensive. To address this, ThreatMetrix allows for custom tuning of rules to reduce false positives, and also automated assignment of transactions to analyst queues by configurable rules. This enables analysts to focus on the highest risk transactions, based on score, transaction amount, or criteria such as geographical origin, for instance. When a transaction is reviewed, it can be marked as rejected/accepted to improve the ability of ThreatMetrix to score transactions through predictive scoring.
  • Customizable Alerting: ThreatMetrix supports automated alert rules to notify an analyst by email when a transaction meets specified criteria. These alerts can be set based on risk, transaction or device attributes, or associated with specific fraud behavior. Alert content can be customized and linked directly back to the transaction for review.
  • Online Portal and Dashboard for Transaction Monitoring and Link Analysis: In addition to a real-time API that immediately returns device identifiers, anomaly indicators and risk scores, ThreatMetrix provides an online portal to review past transactions. It includes a dashboard that shows recent high-risk transactions and trends, as well as advanced search capabilities to assist fraud analysts in finding related transactions and discovering links between suspicious activities.
  • Bulletproof Security and Privacy Protection: ThreatMetrix provides advanced device identification technology to detect and alert based on suspicious device anomalies. For even more powerful fraud detection, transaction identifiers (such as an email address, payment account hash, phone number, etc.) can be passed to allow for more correlation. When provided, ThreatMetrix protects these identifiers with encryption and one-way hashing so the data is never exposed or shared. In addition, power role-based permissions and full auditing meet and exceed enterprise security compliance requirements.

Source: Marketwire

Eckoh Provides Mobile Payment Solution to Gas and Electricity Supplier Utilita

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Eckoh, a UK developer of speech recognition solutions for customer service centers, has expanded its three-year contract with Utilita Group to include mobile phone payment capabilities.

The new service will enables Utilita’s customers to purchase electricity or gas via SMS. The EckohPAY product handles payments in a PCI compliant manner, and can be deployed through speech, web, mobile and smartphone applications.

Utilita is an independent UK company, licensed by Ofgem and Ofcom to supply gas and electricity. Utilita customers that have pre-pay meters can purchase electricity or gas using the EckohPAY SMS service. Customers register their mobile number online and when they want to “top-up,” they send an SMS message with their electric or gas card number and the amount they wish to pay to a dedicated shortcode. Once the details are validated and authorised, the customer is issued a code to activate the purchased electricity or gas.

“Following the successful launch of Eckoh’s web payment solution last year, we were keen to work with them to expand the scope of services offered to our customers. With this new mobile payment facility, our customers have another convenient and secure method for purchasing their electricity or gas, and we expect to add further services during the course of our contract,” said  Bill Bullen, Managing Director and Founder of Utilita.

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, added,  “We are delighted that Utilita have chosen to adopt Eckoh’s mobile payment solution, and this demonstrates the value that our EckohPAY solution has already delivered them. This new agreement shows the breadth of Eckoh’s offering – covering speech, web, mobile and smartphone applications – which enables our clients to increase customer satisfaction through enhancing consumer choice and convenience whilst improving operational efficiency.”

Source: Business Wire

375 Million+ Mobile Payment Users by 2015, Says Report

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Mobile payments are an emerging opportunity to make payment from or with a mobile handset. While a success in certain countries and with fringe audiences already, mobile payments have not yet achieved success on a global scale. However, it is anticipated that this will begin to change in 2011 as the number of mobile payment users starts a significant run up from 116 million to over 375 million in 2015, according to a recent research report from In-Stat.

“There appears to be consumer demand for mobile payments,” says Amy Cravens, Market Analyst. “Consumers do recognize pain points with current payment systems and indicate support for a cleaner, easier alternative. If mobile operators are able to push beyond the infrastructural challenges and introduce these services to the mass market, the transactional value of the mobile payments market is positioned to grow nearly tenfold over the next several years.”

Recent research findings identify the market’s preparedness including:

  • Significant smartphone penetration.
  • Consumer comfort level with purchasing goods with their phone through existing channels.
  • A desire among mobile operators to develop opportunities to generate revenue from mobile based commerce.
  • Infrastructural developments supporting contactless payments, including NFC-enabled mobile phones and Point of Sale (POS) terminals.

The In-Stat report, entitled “Mobile Payments: Is the Market Ready?” examines the mobile payment market structure, outlining the various elements in this multifaceted market. Discussion will include mobile payment types as well as the relationships comprised in this complex ecosystem.

The report also includes:

  • Market player profiles including: Bling Nation, Boku, Clairmail, Isis, mFoundry, and Obopay
  • Forecasts for the mobile payments market through 2015
  • Forecasts of anticipated usage and transaction volume
  • Detailed examination of the NFC market
  • All forecasts extend through 2015 and are segmented by geographic regions

Source: MarketWire

Security Concerns Still Holding Back Mobile Payment Consumers in 2011

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Mobio Identity Systems, an international mobile payments and marketing company, today released a comprehensive report on mobile payment adoption and use in North America called “Mobile Commerce Handcuffs.”

The report contains findings from a survey distributed to North American consumers. The report reveals that 94% of respondents would make a mobile payment if they knew it was secure. There are numerous additional significant findings, which are supported with charts, graphs, and statistics. Overall, the report highlights the significance of security as a barrier to growth of the m-commerce market.

More information: Mobile Commerce Handcuffs – Report.

Source: MarketWire

Google to Test Mobile Payments in New York and San Francisco

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Google Inc. plans to start testing a mobile-payment service at stores in New York and San Francisco within four months, letting shoppers use their phones to ring up purchases, two people familiar with the project said.

The company will pay for installation of thousands of special cash-register systems from VeriFone Systems Inc. PAY at merchant locations, said one of the people, who requested anonymity because Google’s plans haven’t been made public. The registers would accept payments from mobile phones equipped with so-called near-field-communication technology.

via Bloomberg.

Corduro

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Corduro, Inc. is the first to enable payments in a mobile, social, cloud platform on a global scale. In addition to the company’s suite of cloud services that enable agile payments, Corduro offers tools for personal data storage, customer relationship management tools, and social media enabled communication. Founded in 2008, Corduro is headquartered in Southlake, Texas.

The company completed a Series A  in early 2010 with Google Ventures as the lead investor. Participating with Google Ventures was Founder Collective and Western Technology Investments.

More information: Corduro