As Real-Time P2P Heats up, Acculynk’s PIN-Based Payzur Banks on Network Links

By John Stewart

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When Acculynk Inc. introduced its Payzur person-to-person payments service two years ago, it saw it as a way of leveraging the company’s virtual PIN-pad technology along with PIN-debit networks to enable faster, guaranteed payments between individuals.

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Now Payzur is part of a scramble among payments providers to stake out positions in a P2P market where sending payments to just about anyone in the blink of an eye is rapidly becoming a settled expectation among consumers.

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Last month, MasterCard laid down a gauntlet with its MasterCard Send, a back-end switch that offers real-time P2P payments between debit card holders. The hub is at the disposal of P2P services that want to speed up payments and extend their reach, MasterCard says. Meanwhile, PIN-debit network operators like Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (People Pay), Shazam Inc. (Bolts), and Co-Op Financial Services (Twig) have launched P2P services that leverage the networks’ near-real-time clearing capabilities.

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From nothing in 2009, PIN debit had already accounted for 1.4 million P2P transactions in 2012, according to the Federal Reserve’s triennial Payments Study, last released in in 2013.

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But while Payzur leverages PIN-debit functionality, Atlanta-based Acculynk doesn’t own or operate a PIN-debit network. Instead, over the course of its 7-year history the company has forged agreements with some 13 networks to let consumers pay online merchants—via desktop and mobile devices—using their PIN-debit cards.

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That original service, called PaySecure, features technology that displays a PIN pad on the consumer’s device screen. To foil keyloggers, Acculynk’s software scrambles the array of digits on the “pad” each time it displays.

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With Payzur, Acculynk has adapted the same technology for P2P payments. And now, with a P2P boom under way, the service appears to be gaining traction. Half a dozen PIN-debit networks representing 6,000 financial institutions have connected to the service, and the company is working through online-banking providers to sign up the member banks. Links to Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. are expected to go live within a few months.

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Acculynk offers Payzur as a white-label solution, with a set of application programming interfaces. Banks can brand the service and let Acculynk host the virtual PIN pad or integrate it with the APIs. “We’re getting a great response,” says Steve Ostroff, general manager for Payzur. A big reason for that, he says, is that the service “is a fully real-time product because it runs on debit rails.”

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“Real time” is a term that has a rather elastic definition, but Ostroff says most networks see it as meaning that funds must be available to the receiver within 30 minutes. “We’re beating that,” he says.

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Payzur lets debit card holders skip their regular online-banking log-in and use their PIN as their credential. Once on the service, they enter an email address or mobile number for the receiver, then enter the amount of the payment, their own debit card number, and PIN. The payee gets an email or text message alerting him to the payment. Funds move via the debit switches, or by automated clearing house if necessary.

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The key role for the PIN is likely to boost Payzur in the P2P sweepstakes, says Beth Robertson, managing director of Robertson Payments Services LLC. “It’s basic, something people use repeatedly for transactions so they know it,” she says. “It’s a good idea.”