Tuesday, July 5, 2011

"Thousands and Thousands" of Bank of America Debit Card Accounts Compromised?

WBTV is reporting that Bank of America has sent out "thousands and thousands" of replacement debit cards to holders of accounts that have been compromised.
CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - Bank of America is sending letters to an undisclosed number of customers to inform them their debit card accounts have been "compromised."  "To protect your accounts, Bank of America is presenting you with this replacement card with a new account number and your existing PIN," the letter reads. "Please destroy your old debit card by cutting it up."  The bank isn't telling reporters how many people are at risk.  But a WBTV producer received the note, and when she called the bank as a client, a representative told her "thousands and thousands" of the letters went out.  read more

NIC Technologies Brings Mobile Access to Federal Campaign Finance Filings

New iPhone application brings searchable access to financial filings for Presidential and Congressional candidates
WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Transparency into presidential and Congressional campaign finances became more convenient today as NIC Technologies, LLC announces the launch of a free iPhone application, “FEC Campaign Finance $earch,” providing mobile access to public Federal Election Commission (FEC) data. Available for free download on iTunes, users can search by federal candidate and/or committee, resulting in totals for net contributions, net distributions, cash and debt, as reported by that candidate or committee.
http://www.nicusa.com
“We independently developed this as a public service to give mobile access to this important data.”
“This application gives real-time access to public information on federal campaign finance totals,” said Randall Bartlett, president of NIC Technologies, LLC. “We independently developed this as a public service to give mobile access to this important data.”
The new iPhone application also includes an advanced search giving users election finance data from 2001 to the present, with office, political party, and candidate status search fields. Senate and House searches also include state, and where appropriate the district criteria.
“A quick search on the new FEC Campaign Finance $earch app provides information on over 150 presidential candidates who filed with the FEC in the last Presidential election year, 2008,” said Bartlett. “The app will provide mobile ‘ringside seat’ access for current information on candidates in the upcoming 2012 presidential election.”
The FEC Campaign Finance $earch app was developed and is managed by NIC Technologies, LLC, part of eGovernment firm NIC Inc.’s (NASDAQ: EGOV) family of companies. NIC Technologies also provides eGovernment services for other federal and state agencies, and a series of systems developed for the FEC to provide searchable access to FEC data, including historic litigation matters (via the EQS system), and Advisory Opinion actions (via the SAOS system). NIC Technologies has also supported the FEC by receiving and processing all electronic filings for federal elections and helping the FEC electronically provide filing information to the public.
About NIC
NIC Inc. is the nation’s leading provider of official government portals, online services, and secure payment processing solutions. The company’s innovative eGovernment services help reduce costs and increase efficiencies for government agencies, citizens, and businesses across the country. The NIC family of companies provides eGovernment solutions for more than 3,000 federal, state, and local agencies across the United States. Additional information is available at http://www.egov.com.

Contacts

NIC
Randall Bartlett, 703-288-1471
rbartlett@nicusa.com

Durbin Amendment will Lead to Internet PIN Debit says Acculynk

Issuers Must Quiz EFT Networks on Fraud Prevention with Durbin Finalized

21 Cents and 5 bps Not Enough to Cover Costs of Online Fraud and Chargebacks at Current Experience Levels, Notes Acculynk
ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As the ink on Durbin dries, debit card issuers will be finalizing contracts with their new secondary PIN network partner in order to comply with the prohibition against exclusivity in the Federal Reserve Board’s recent announcement. Before they do, issuers still have time to ensure their new partners have a solution to reduce fraud in online debit transactions which is now vital to the economics of debit card e-commerce. A leader in online debit transaction authentication, Atlanta-based Acculynk’s Ashish Bahl outlines and addresses four important questions issuers should ask of a network partner before they sign with a secondary EFT network.
 Acculynk“Post Durbin, Will Internet PIN Debit Become the New Darling of Debit Card Issuers?”
1) What are the economics of online debit now that rates are out?
Issuers should ask if their new EFT network partner offers a way to allow them to continue to be profitable with debit as an online payment type, especially with the current rate of growth in debit and the potential for increase post-Durbin. Most issuers are telling us that with Durbin rates now at 21 cents plus five basis points per transaction, they are underwater with card not present signature debit transactions. Most of our issuing partners recognize that fraud and chargebacks in the online debit world are significantly higher for signature debit than for pin debit with a higher level of authentication. In fact, we find that signature debit fraud is five times higher than online PIN debit. Asking your new EFT partner to clarify the economics of both signature and PIN debit will lead to a better decision.
2) How will you reduce fraud on card-not-present (CNP) transactions?
This question is important as issuers can and should look to their secondary network partner to contribute to fraud and chargeback reduction. For example, ACCEL Exchange and several other EFT networks offer online merchants a simple online PIN debit solution that significantly enhances debit authentication and reduces fraud, resulting in improved economics for the issuer.
3) Which internet debit authentication solution do you use?
Issuers should check with their EFT partner to be sure that they have a widely adoptable authentication solution that will allow them to build their e-Commerce debit business. Right now there is talk of reducing fraud by introducing transaction limits or increasing the selectivity of signature debit as a tender type. If your EFT network provides debit authentication that reduces fraud and chargebacks on internet debit transactions, you can grow your online transaction volume profitably.
4) What is your experience to date with Internet PIN debit?
Be sure to understand how well the network’s solution has actually performed in reducing fraud and chargebacks for online debit, which is even more important given the new profitability pressures.
Historically, even though PIN debit is more secure, signature debit was highly attractive to issuers based on the higher interchange rate. With the reduction in transaction-based revenues due to the now finalized Durbin regulation, card issuers are faced with product and pricing decisions to stay profitable. Signature debit still represents the majority of debit transactions despite the increased fraud cost: based on issuer feedback, the Fed reported signature debit fraud at 13.1 basis points versus 3.5 basis points incurred on PIN debit transactions. Fraud is even more pronounced in the CNP environment where, according to CyberSource’s 2010 Fraud Report, fraud is 90 basis points.
Online PIN Debit is an option that allows EFT networks to reduce fraud for online debit transactions. In a recent study, the Pulse EFT network found that with the second level of authentication provided by online PIN debit chargebacks in comparable categories were reduced by 77% and fraud has been de minimis.
With the PaySecure online PIN pad offered by Acculynk, the consumer enters their PIN into the PIN pad that floats over the merchant check out page. A consumer’s PIN, which the consumer is familiar with from use at the ATM and the point of sale, provides a fraud-reducing second factor of authentication simply not present with signature debit. Issuers who embrace Internet PIN debit will keep costs for online transactions to levels that allow for some level of positive margin.
Offering a clear case to issuers for online PIN debit, “Post Durbin, Will Internet PIN Debit Become the New Darling of Debit Card Issuers?” is the just released white paper from Acculynk.
About Acculynk
Acculynk secures online transactions with a suite of software-only services backed by a patented authentication and encryption framework that provides greater security for issuers, EFT networks, merchants and payment processors. Acculynk’s PaySecure® utilizes a graphical PIN-pad for the secure entry of a consumer’s PIN online and is available to merchants through existing acquirer relationships, enabling speedy implementation. PaySecure is currently enabled on over 3,000 merchant websites. Acculynk has partnerships with 9 EFT networks to process PaySecure transactions and with six leading payment processors, and is certified with PULSE, First Data and Master Card, among other key industry leaders. Visit http://www.acculynk.com.

Contacts

Acculynk
Sandra Chesnutt, 678-894-7013
schesnutt@acculynk.com

NFC Mobile Weekly News July 5th


From NFC World
The search giant's new social networking project includes built-in support for tag reading, letting users with NFC phones simply read a tag to post information stored in it to their Google+ account.

The Norwegian bank and mobile network operator have contracted Giesecke & Devrient to provide them with a turnkey NFC solution for a mobile payments trial that will involve a dozen merchant locations in Oslo.

Banks and mobile network operators should work together on a mobile payments business model that plays to both their strengths, says Citi's Dickson Chu.

"At this stage, we will not be progressing with microSD as a contactless payment technology platform," says the Australian banking giant.

The hi-tech version of a traditional murder mystery game uses NFC phones and tags to allow participants to discover clues hidden around a venue and to accuse their choice of suspect.

The planned international rollout of NFC services to Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile and Era mobile networks will use bespoke NFC SIMs developed by Giesecke & Devrient. The new SIMs will be "functionally expanded" and "go beyond the standardised NFC functions".

The hotel room key market leader, part of the Assa Abloy group which recently ran an NFC trial at the Clarion Hotel Stockholm, has now brought the technology to market.

The Chinese handset manufacturer will integrate Inside's NFC technology into its GSM and next-generation TD-SCDMA smart phone platform, which is based on the Android operating system.

"We need to own the market space and prevent market differentiation before any other party enters the market with enough money,” says Peter Van Leeuwen of KPN, a partner in the Dutch NFC joint venture that includes both banks and mobile operators.

From this summer, subscribers to the UK's Quick Tap NFC service will be able to use their phones to make payments in Nice, home of the French Cityzi NFC service.


NFC handsets: Find out which phones are available now, what's coming soon — and what's around the corner.

Mobile Payment China 2011 | 12-13 July | Shanghai, China
NFC World Congress | 19-21 September | Sophia Antipolis, France
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ValidSoft CEO Calls on Card Industry to Integrate Fraud Prevention and Privacy Into Consumer Products


LONDON--(Marketwire - Jul 5, 2011) - Patrick Carroll, CEO of ValidSoft (www.validsoft.com), called on banks and cards issuers to make fraud prevention an integral feature of their cards and payments products and services at a conference yesterday on "The Future of Cards and Payments."
"Not only is ensuring transaction security and customer's privacy the right thing to do for the customer, it can be the cornerstone of a powerful value proposition across all electronic channels, especially cards and banking-commerce," Carroll said in his presentation, "Competitive Differentiation Through Security."
ValidSoft is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Elephant Talk Communications, Inc. (OTCBBETAK) (http://www.elephanttalk.com/), an international provider of business software to the telecommunications and financial industries. ValidSoft is a global supplier of fraud prevention, authentication and transaction verification solutions across multiple banking channels.
Carroll issued his call to action in a keynote speech to a gathering in London of senior representatives of UK banks, card issuers, and merchant acquirers which is being held on July 4 and 5. ValidSoft is serving as a major sponsor of the event in order to raise awareness of key decision makers in the latest developments in fraud prevention and transaction security solutions.
The conference is organised by Marketforce. For details of the event, see http://marketforce.eu.com/Conferences/cards11/Programme/.
Carroll's presentation followed an expert panel discussion led by the National Fraud Authority and three retail banks. Carroll had the opportunity to provide insight input onto how security has increasingly moved up banks' and customers' agendas. Carroll explained how ValidSoft's solutions can not only help ensure strong security levels but also enable banks and card issuers to provide an integrated security solution in cards and payments products.
VALid-POS®, is a groundbreaking fraud prevention solution which uses patent pending technology to apply proximity correlation logic to confirm, in real time, whether a cardholder's mobile phone is within the proximity of the ATM or merchant terminal at which the card is being used. This practice minimises the number of incorrectly declined cross-border transactions and, subsequently, improves fraud discovery rates. These results in increased interchange fee revenue reduced case-management processing costs for Issuers, reduced fraud levels and, critically, a seamless customer experience with legitimate transactions approved rather than declined. Crucially, the proximity correlation logic utilised is not a Location Based Service and therefore does not incur the data protection and privacy issues associated with those services.
ValidSoft is the only security software company in the world to be awarded the European Privacy Seal for its product, VALid-POS®. The European Privacy Seal was awarded in March 2010 by EuroPrise, certifying its compliance with European Data Protection law.
About ValidSoftValidSoft is a subsidiary of Elephant Talk Communications, Inc. (OTCBBETAK), (www.elephanttalk.com) and is a market leader in providing solutions to counter electronic fraud relating to card, the internet, and telephone channels. ValidSoft's solutions are at the cutting edge of the market and are used to verify the authenticity of both parties to a transaction (Mutual Authentication), and the integrity of the transaction itself (Transaction Verification) for the mass market, in a highly cost effective and secure manner, yet easy to use and intuitive. For more information, please visit (www.validsoft.com).
About Elephant Talk CommunicationsElephant Talk Communications, Inc. (OTCBBETAK) is an international provider of business software and services to the telecommunications and financial services industry. The company enables both mobile carriers and virtual operators to offer a full suite of products, delivery platforms, support services, superior industry expertise and high quality customer service without substantial upfront investments from clients. Elephant Talk provides global telecommunication companies, mobile network operators, banks, supermarkets, consumer product companies, media firms, and other businesses a full suite of products and services that enables them to fully provide telecom services as part of their business offerings. The company offers various dynamic products that include remote health care, credit card fraud prevention, mobile internet ID security, multi-country discounted phone services, loyalty management services, and a whole range of other emerging customized mobile services. For more information, visit (www.elephanttalk.com).

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US Mobile Payments Market to Triple to $670 Billion by 2015

July 05, 2011 03:57 ET


Mobile Payments Market to Almost Triple in Value by 2015 Reaching $670bn, According to New Juniper Report

HAMPSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwire - Jul 5, 2011) - A new study from Juniper Research has determined that the total value of mobile payments for digital and physical goods, money transfers and NFC (Near Field Communications) transactions will reach $670bn by 2015, up from $240bn this year. These forecasts represent the gross merchandise value of all purchases or the value of money being transferred.
The new Mobile Payments Strategies report revealed that all segments will exhibit 2x to 3x growth over the next five years. This growth will be driven by the rapid adoption of mobile ticketing, NFC contactless payments, physical goods purchases and money transfers as people in both developed and developing countries use their devices for everyday transactions.
Some 20 countries are expected to launch NFC services in the next 18 months, resulting in transactions approaching $50 billion worldwide by 2014. Meanwhile the need for financial access in developing countries is such that active mobile money users will double by 2013 and drive transaction values accordingly.
Senior analyst David Snow explained: "Our analysis shows that emerging segments such as physical goods payments, NFC and money transfers will fuel market growth by a factor of 2.7 times by 2015. Digital goods is the largest segment and, although forecast to more than double, it is not growing as quickly as some of the newer segments."
Other key messages from the report include:
  • The top 3 regions for mobile payments (Far East & China, W. Europe and N. America) will represent 75% of the global mobile payment gross transaction value by 2015.
  • Digital goods payments will account for nearly 40% of the market in 2015.
The study provides the big picture of mobile payments, providing forecasts of the main market segments of digital and physical goods purchases, contactless NFC and domestic and international money transfers and remittances, providing regional forecasts of gross transaction values.
A new Mobile Money Whitepaper and further details of the study, 'Mobile Payment Strategies: Opportunities & Markets 2011-2015' can be freely downloaded from www.juniperresearch.com. Alternatively, please contact John Levett at john.levett@juniperresearch.com, telephone +44(0)1256 830001.
Juniper Research provides research and analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports and industry commentary.

Seriously? Could m-payments become a US$670bn industry? - Silicon Republic

I have a growing conviction that m-payments stand to be as big a deal for the internet industry in the second decade of the 21st century as advertising was in the first decade.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt recently opined that electronic payments stand to be a US$3trn industry worldwide in the coming years. In recent weeks, Google kicked off its NFC odyssey in New York. At the same time, Samsung and Visa kick started their NFC payments ecosystem for London ahead of the 2012 Olympics.
If you think about payments as a whole think of it in these three ways – online payments, traditional offline payments in shops via cash, and electronic payments via cards in shops.
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Visa to Provide Update on Durbin Effect Wednesday

Visa will provide a business update on the Durbin Effect on Wednesday, July 6th:  http://epaymentnews.blogspot.com/2011/06/visa-inc-to-provide-business-update-on.html#axzz1RAOsIIKH

Selected Excerpt from today's Wall Street Journal 
A second clause of the Fed's ruling threatens to cut into Visa's revenue in another, bigger way. The Fed's decision to require two PIN—or personal identification number—networks on each debit card, one of which must be unaffiliated with the processor, will hit Visa even more than the fee cap. More than two-thirds of Visa's debit cards currently have only one PIN network: its own. Under the new rule, these cards must now take on a second, unaffiliated PIN network. When a shopper pays with a debit card that uses a PIN number, merchants may choose which PIN network will handle the order at the time of the card swipe. Considering that about one-third of all U.S. debit volume stems from PIN transactions, Visa stands to lose as much as 4% of its revenue under the new regulation, some analysts estimate.  read more
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Biometric Mobile Phones Expect Heavy Growth

Sqwizz Includes a Biometric Scanner and Encrypted PIN Pad
NFC News reports that Goode Intelligence, an information security research and analysis specialist, has issued a new report that details an expectation of heavy growth in the biometric products and services for mobile phones over the next five years.
Specifically, Goode forecasts a total revenue generation of $30 million from biometric mobile phone products and services in 2011 with that number increasing to over $161 million in 2015.
The report also details how biometrics will work on the mobile phones. The techology is expected to impact device protection, mobile commerce security, near field communication security, replacing PINs and passwords.
The report predicts that embedded fingerprint readers and voice recognition technology will be the first modalities to take off.  
The Biometrics Institute, an independent not-for-profit representing and including members from government, financial services, health care, and biometric technology providers and developers, has released a report detailing the results from its second annual Industry Survey. Among the items detailed in the report are past developments driving the marketplace, potential roadblocks, future applications and future market drivers.
read more »
A case for biometric technologies inclusion in mobile phones is made citing its potential in terms of addressing consumer needs for data protection, device security and inclusion in mobile services and operations in a Tech Biometric article.
read more »
3M Cogent has announced the release of its new BioTrust biometric logon software developed to replace traditional usernames and passwords with biometrics.
The new software is designed for use with Microsoft’s Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 operating systems and utilizes facial and fingerprint recognition to replace traditional means of a variety of logins.
read more »
Strategy Analytics has released a report lauding the newly announced mobile marketing and mobile payments joint venture between Everything Everywhere, Telefonica O2 and Vodafone in the UK as a “positive move” that will enable the mobile operators to secure a position at the heart of the nascent NFC contactless 

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