E-COM
April 11th, 2016 by Elma Jane

Card-not-present fraud is projected to worsen. However, 3D secure technology has made progress and is gaining more and more adoption.

How can e-Commerce merchants avoid CNP fraud?

Here are other ways to make card-not-present transaction safe:

Biometrics – Using Fingerprint Scans and Facial Recognition or Selfie. To validate the identity of the consumer.
Challenge Questions – Such as listing your father’s middle name or a fact known only to the consumer is an effectively added layer of security.
Location Data – Another way to fight against fraud is location data and the use of IP addresses to certify the location and identity of the consumer making the transaction.
Outsource Your Payment Platform – Payments pages hosted by a reputable payment service provider are much more secure.
One-time Passwords – During the checkout process, there will be a window to enter a one-time password which the consumer receives a text message on his/her mobile phone. The consumer enters the password within a short time frame to authenticate the transaction. This solution is especially effective against cyber criminals who steal credentials.

For your payment services needs, give us a call at 888-996-2273

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Credit Card Security, e-commerce & m-commerce Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Breach
February 5th, 2016 by Elma Jane

Businesses and banking institutions must require consumers to use other types of authentication methods, like biometrics, mobile verification codes and geo-location.

Merchants and banks can expect more hackers to breach customer accounts that rely only on usernames and passwords for online authentication.

This type of fraud will only grow more as hackers recognize and take advantage of the opportunity presented by on-file accounts protected by weak authentication.

Many online users use the same username and password for multiple accounts, once those credentials are compromised, criminals can use them to access accounts on different websites.

With the ease and simplicity of password vaults and safes that are easy and efficient to use and user education, this problem finds a solution.

A stronger authentication that goes far beyond username and password, is a powerful tool in effort to prevent data breaches.

 

 

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

NFC
December 7th, 2015 by Elma Jane

Most payments will probably be made with apps in phones or smartwatches in less than a decade from now, using NFC, biometrics or other mechanisms that don’t involve swiping or using plastic cards.

If your mobile device has an integrated NFC chip, you can use a mobile wallet app like Apple Pay and Android Pay to pay for items that support NFC transactions at a retail store. Simply wave your device near an NFC compatible terminal to pay, no card swiping required.

Both Apple Pay and Android Pay have fingerprint scanners on phones, you can enable payments with just a fingerprint scan.

In some countries, it’s easy for consumers to get credit cards with imbedded NFC chips. This means that you may be able to wave your card at the terminal instead of swiping, no phone required. In America, though, because NFC hasn’t caught on until recently, analysts expect that NFC via smartphone and smartwatch services such as Apple Pay and Android Pay will dominate contactless transactions in the next few years.

Just as credit cards replaced cash, credit cards will be replaced by digital payments which will continue to rely on the credit infrastructure but will obscure the plastic card itself.

As consumers, we love to see better products. When it comes to payments, we need Standards and Reliability.

 

 

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Near Field Communication, Smartphone Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

Biometrics
November 12th, 2015 by Elma Jane

The United States will leap-frog over chip-and-signature EMV cards quickly and move into biometrics and other security measures, a recent panel discussion on payment technology has heard.

Biometrics is going to play a bigger role in payments going forward because it can be more convenient and it can be a stronger form of verification.

Biometric technology has been a major topic in the payment industry. In another panel held during the recently concluded Money 20/20, experts discussed the role that it will play in the future of the payment industry.

The panel also talked about various biometric technologies including voice, face, iris and fingerprint recognition, which are paving way for new applications in the financial services and payments sectors.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants Tagged with: , , , , , ,

EMV
October 1st, 2015 by Elma Jane

The day the payments industry has pointed to for several years arrives today, a turning point in the U.S.‘s migration to EMV chip-and-PIN cards.

Rules set by Visa and MasterCard as of today, the liability for fraud carried out in physical stores with counterfeit cards belongs to the merchant if it has not yet upgraded its POS system to accept EMV-enabled chip cards. Banks will be issuing EMV Chip Cards.

An enormous change, as everyone learns to deal with the new technology that requires consumers to insert their cards and leave them in the store machines throughout a payment transaction, rather than swipe.

In a recent survey, less than a third of merchants overall have invested in EMV-compliant technology, and one study said 80 percent of small and midsize merchants have not upgraded their systems as of today’s liability shift.

Issuers are claiming to be more prepared than merchants, but according to the Smart Card Alliance, around 200 million chip cards have been issued to U.S. cardholders. That, however, is less than 17 percent of the approximately 1.2 billion payment cards in circulation.

What is clear is that today does not represent the end of the journey. The lack of preparedness at the physical point of sale, however, may be beneficial for card-not-present merchants.

Over the past few months, the mainstream media has awoken to the fact that implementing EMV does not mean fraud will disappear. Fraudsters quickly adapted to the difficulty of counterfeiting cards by attacking Card-Not-Present channels, where a chip has no effect.

In other markets, fraud migrated quite rapidly to card-not-present channels. It is necessary on e-commerce merchants to protect themselves with an array of tools, like device authentication, one-time passwords, randomized PIN pad and biometrics. Fraud mitigation tools like data analytics, address and CVV verification, 3D secure and tokenization. These services should be available from their merchant acquirer processor or gateway.

There should be a gradual reduction in card fraud over the next 12-18 months in spite of the delays in this country’s EMV migration. It’s going to take time for the technology to be adopted.

U.S. Merchants’ overall relative lack of preparedness for EMV may give e-commerce and mobile merchants time they didn’t think they would have to explore the options.

Sophisticated authentication technologies such as biometrics will help increase the security of card transactions. Device-based verification could be easily incorporated in an EMV transaction.

Banks have expressed interest more in using the phone as a biometrics. It’s all going to depend on what is the most convenient way to access your funds. The nice thing about biometrics is it’s meant to enable more convenience and stronger security.

 

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce, EMV EuroPay MasterCard Visa, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Point of Sale Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 7th, 2015 by Admin

Biometrics Market To Reach $14.9 Billion by 2024

The Biometrics market currently sits at $2 billion, by 2024, it will reach $14.9 billion, with a cumulative total revenue of $67.8 billion. This is being driven by new advancements in Biometrics Hardware and Software that are not only transforming payments, but also serving as frictionless alternatives to security in a myriad of use cases.

For consumer facing security, Biometrics can be deployed at a low price-point for high-volume authentication. Think an iris scan or finger swipe for quickly unlocking a mobile device like an iPhone 6 or Samsung Galaxy S6.

The forecast goes over use cases that spans from Point-of-Sale transactions, to voter identification, making the case for Biometrics embedding itself into a vast number of aspects in everyday life.

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Mobile Payments, Mobile Point of Sale, Point of Sale, Smartphone Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

June 17th, 2014 by Elma Jane

BioCatch, an Israeli startup that uses behavioural biometrics to authenticate visitors to banking and e-commerce sites, has raised $10 million in a funding round. BioCatch aims to eliminate passwords and authentication dongles for online banking and shopping, replacing them with a system that recognizes users by how they physically use their computer or tablet. The firm’s technology collects and analyses over 400 bio-behavioral, cognitive and physiological parameters based on how people type and move a cursor around to create unique profiles for visitors to sites.

In addition, the system creates invisible challenges for visitors to sites. For example, when a user moves the cursor towards a button, they are deliberately knocked slightly off course and subconsciously have to correct in what the company says is a way unique to them. This, argues BioCatch, is more secure than traditional authentication methods, demonstrating an 80% reduction in false positives for detecting the same amount of fraud. It also significantly reduces friction for the customer because the system automatically kicks in when they visit a site using the technology. BioCatch says that it has signed up several unnamed banks and e-commerce sites, and that it will use the new funding to push on in North American and Europe as well as to expand R&D efforts. Funding will also allow to continue strengthening BioCatch offering and expand global reach in strategic markets, while keeping the world’s largest and most influential institutions safe and secure.

 

Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, e-commerce & m-commerce Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

January 13th, 2014 by Elma Jane

Australia & New Zealand Banking Group plans to use voice biometrics for authorizing large-value transfers to external bank accounts via its mobile banking service.

The Australian newspaper said ANZ is still piloting the voice biometrics feature, which would enable its mobile banking customers to make payments of more than A$1,000 ($910 U.S.)… The current limit for external transfers to clients of other banks using its smartphone app. Customers would authorize a higher-value payment by speaking into their smartphones, and ANZ’s IT system would compare their voices to digital voiceprints stored on its server.

The voice biometrics system will likely be launched within the next 12 to 18 months, Phil Chronican, the chief executive of ANZ’s Australia operation, said during a Sydney press conference last week.

Chronican added that ANZ also plans to use voice biometrics for authenticating transactions initiated at its call centers.

ANZ will launch the revamped mobile apps that it has been developing as part of the “Banking on Australia” initiative in the first quarter of 2014.

ANZ’s three-year old GoMoney mobile banking app and its more recent FastPay small business mobile payments service will both be re-released with new navigation and personalization options, iTNews said.

 

Posted in Credit card Processing, Credit Card Security, Mobile Payments, Smartphone Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 12th, 2013 by Admin

Small businesses are gaining traction in the mobile payment landscape. Mobile credit card readers attached to a smartphone or tablet now account for billions of dollars in m-commerce sales. “Together, mobile and social are transforming the way SMBs acquire and retain customers, With the heavy use of social media, SMB marketing is quickly becoming a two-way engagement rather than a one-way promotion.” Said Steve Marshall of BIA/Kesley. As more people switch to and upgrade their smartphones, AT&T, Verizon and T-mobile are looking to partner with digital wallet provider Isis. Read more of this article »

Posted in Credit Card Reader Terminal, Credit Card Security, Digital Wallet Privacy, Electronic Payments, Mobile Payments, Near Field Communication, Smartphone Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,