Mobile Devices to Secure Online Transactions

• The Canadian authentication specialist SafePay Solutions should soon launch a new tool that would allow merchants and consumers to confirm their online card transactions using their mobile phones.

• Once the app downloaded (available in iOS for now –Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry OS versions are to be made available later), the user provides his name, post address, e-mail as well as the six first and last digits of his PAN. Whenever his card is used on a SafePay partner website, a notification is sent: he then has one minute to accept or reject it.

• The app is free for customers, and e-merchants will pay 240 dollars a year for it.

Source: The Paypers

• The app is still under development and its scope is limited for now (negotiations are underway to enroll other partner websites). However, this solution has a flaw: if the user does not respond in time to the notification, the transaction is processed as usual. In case of fraud, he must turn to his bank. SafePay plans to have this feature modified by this fall enabling default rejection.

• This said, this real time tool, just like mobile solutions letting customers disable their cards themselves ("card lock " by Diebold, or City Bank (Texas) app for example, see August 2011, January 2012 and May 2012 Insights), could help protect them and increase their awareness of online risks.