US ramps up on Chip and Pin

US retailers back chip and pin

"The US payments industry should undergo a coordinated migration to chip and PIN transactions which should support a broad range of payment types (contact, contactless, dual interface, debit, credit, stored value, private and 'white' label, etc.) and devices (cards, mobile devices, fobs, etc.)," says the Merchant Advisory Group, a retailer trade association whose members include Walgreens, Walmart, Target, Sears, McDonald's, Best Buy and Home Depot

Visa certifies Samsung, LG and BlackBerry NFC phones for mobile payments

The Samsung Galaxy S II, LG Optimus Net NFC, BlackBerry Bold 9900/9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9360/9380 have now been added to the list of approved Visa payments products, enabling financial institutions to use them in commercial NFC deployments for the first time.

VISA: Six NFC phones good for PayWave

Visa Inc and Visa Europe have jointly announced that six NFC phones have now been certified for SIM-based NFC mobile payments and have been added to the list of Visa-compliant payment products available for commercial deployment by financial institutions.
The six phones certified for use with Visa PayWave are the Samsung Galaxy S II, the LG Optimus Net NFC, the BlackBerry Bold 9900, the BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 and the BlackBerry Curve 9360.
The certification "paves the way for mobile device manufacturers, mobile operators and retailers to partner with financial institutions to offer Visa mobile payment functionality to consumers globally," says the payments network.
"The players are now in place for mobile payments to become a reality," explains Sandra Alzetta, who heads innovation strategy and mobile business at Visa Europe. "We are working with our member banks, mobile network operators and key handset partners to ensure that future payment technologies are as easy, intuitive and secure as card-based transactions are today. Today's announcement plays a significant role in getting those new technologies into the hands of the consumer."
Visa completed work on its NFC compliance programme and certified the first NFC product, DeviceFidelity's In2Pay microSD device, in December 2010. MasterCard certified its first two devices for PayPass payments, the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and BlackBerry Curve 9360, in October 2011.

Phoenix Managed Networks launches in Europe

Phoenix Managed Networks (Phoenix) the next generation payment network, today announced the most significant launch in the payments industry of the year.

Following the widespread success in the USA Phoenix has introduced a new, dedicated PCI DSS payments transaction network to bring the U.K. and Europe, the fastest, most flexible and reliable service available in the industry.

 

The first provider to offer unlimited capacity, throughput, scalability and resilience, Phoenix's service will meet the reliability needs crucial for high demand environments. In addition, Phoenix's technology goes above and beyond the international security standards and corporate governance obligations to which banks and retailers must comply.

Phoenix is re-writing the network management rule book and has introduced a broad range of advanced payment applications from one easy point of integration including an international payments gateway, sophisticated fraud prevention, authorisation, mobile solutions and settlement capability for POS, ATM and Kiosks. These new state-of-the-art products are incorporated into new service delivery models that the market now demands including "Software as a Service" (SaaS) and Application Service Provider (ASP). These new services are testament that Phoenix is championing the emerging concept that payment transactions are no longer just a means of connecting point A to point B.

This new end-to-end service is designed by payments experts for payments experts. It offers innovation with ground breaking encrypted network capacity and multi-meter transaction based pricing to provide the most cost-effective and PCI DSS compliant network for high volume payment traffic.

Phoenix is led by internationally renowned business entrepreneur John J. McDonnell Jr., founder of TNS Inc. in 1990. Phoenix's Europe operation is spearheaded by Alan Stephenson-Brown and Tim Bell. The three have a previous history of working together when Alan and Tim led the TNS UK operation under Jack in 1997, a success they are determined to better. With a combined expertise of over 50 years at the highest level, noo group is better placed to do this than Phoenix's winning team.
Phoenix has designed 21st century payment technologies in a sector that is in desperate need of modernization. For years retailers and acquirers have faced instances of network down time, an occurrence which in this day and age is unacceptable to any business processing transactions. Alan Stephenson Brown comments, "With the growth of electronic payments worldwide and the increasing use of cards to pay for lower ticket items, the market is rising fast. Extra strain on banks and retailers to cope with increased demand makes it far too risky for businesses to continue to put all their payment transportation needs in one basket. Phoenix is the new essential alternative and we passionately believe in the virtues of dual sourcing network traffic to solve the aged old problem of service interruptions for good."

John J. McDonnell Jr. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Phoenix says, "We founded TNS over 20 years ago on the best technology available at the time. With Phoenix, we have built an entirely modern network to create a healthier competitive landscape. We provide an exclusive focus on the payment space, more modern, flexible technology, and fantastic commercial benefits. Clients now have more choice...this is a good thing."

Paul Rodgers, chairman of Vendorcom said; "This is truly significant news for the payments industry. I am very excited about the opportunities that this development will bring to the market, and I believe Phoenix will fill a void and bring payments networks well and truly into the 21st century."

Phoenix's European head office and operations center is in Sheffield in the UK with the company headquarters in Reston Virginia in the USA. Founded in January 2010, Phoenix is already highly successful in North America, and is advocating a combination of quality, innovation and a guarantee of uncompromising high standard of customer care, to an industry that has been poorly served in recent years.

MPowa launches UK's Square

UK e-commerce outfit Powa has become the latest firm to launch a plastic dongle and mobile app that turns smartphones into payment card readers.

 Although similar systems have been launched by Square, Verifone and Intuit in the US, and iZettle in Sweden, mPowa is the first of its type in the UK, claims the firm.

The free plug-in reader and app will be available next month, letting users accept credit and debit card payments through their iPhones, iPads, BlackBerrys and Android devices, with mPowa taking 0.25% per transaction.

The system conforms to level 1 PCI compliance, putting it at the same level as a bank site, says the vendor. Meanwhile, the precise location of each transaction is recorded by the app, "making life near-impossible for fraudsters".

The technology is aimed at small businesses, says mPowa: "Where once a butcher or farmers' market salesman was tied to one location, using mPowa allows them to take their products directly to their customers without having to rely solely on cash payments."

Several corporates have expressed interest in the technology but mPowa tells Finextra that Barclays has not - as reported by the Telegraph - signed up to give the devices to its small business customers.

The mobile phone card reader business is proving lucrative in the US, where Square, set up by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, had shipped over 800,000 readers by November and reached a valuation of a billion dollars, with Visa and Richard Branson among its investors.

The concept is now beginning to move to other countries, with Intuit launching its GoPayment system in Canada and iZettle hitting the app store in Sweden with a wider European roll out on the horizon.

FacebookTwitter