Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Merchants looking for a way to secure e-commerce and mobile-commerce transactions made with credit and debit cards have a new option with the debut of an update to Acculynk Inc.’s PaySecure service.
The Acculynk technology allows consumers to make PIN-based transactions on their PCs and mobile devices. The Atlanta-based company’s PaySecure system uses a so-called floating PIN pad that appears on the screen at checkout to let users enter a personal identification number. Acculynk’s PayLeap gateway makes the online debit service available to small and mid-sized merchants.
Now, Acculynk has extended that capability to m-commerce transactions, relying on the secure element that is part of near-field communication (NFC) smart phones and host card emulation, a software-based mimic of NFC, says Nandan Sheth, Acculynk president and chief operating officer.
Consumers interact with the updated version of PaySecure upon clicking the checkout button on a merchant’s Web site and selecting a wallet. After the consumer inputs his wallet credentials, the merchant sends that information to Acculynk, Collin Flotta, Acculynk vice president of product, tells Digital Transactions News. Acculynk then transmits the data to the registered phone to trigger the wallet app to open with the purchase data.
The app displays a PIN pad for the consumer to enter a PIN, Flotta says. “At that point the wallet interacts with the secure element, whether it’s on the phone or in host card emulation,” he says. PaySecure receives the payment card details from the wallet and an EMV cryptogram. That information is passed along to the merchant.
The merchant sends the EMV/NFC transaction authorization request to the merchant acquirer for processing. The issuer authorizes the transaction as it does with any other EMV/NFC transaction and sends the response back to the merchant.
No extra hardware or equipment is required to use the service, says Sheth. The merchant only needs the ability to send EMV/NFC transactions to its acquirer. Or it can use the Acculynk PayLeap gateway.
The actual card does not have to have an EMV chip in it, he says. “At the time of provisioning, the virtual card would be provisioned as an EMV/NFC card, providing all of the security EMV provides at the POS,” Sheth says.
The mobile version of PaySecure solves a few problems for merchants, especially as mobile payments continue to grow. One is that the transactions are secured and processed with the same level of security as EMV transactions, Sheth says. Another is that it can be integrated directly into a mobile-commerce site so that, when a consumer checks out, the PIN pad appears without the consumer having to enter anything on the merchant’s site, he says.
Merchants also could benefit from the potential for less fraud, reduced chargebacks, and possibly lower transaction pricing because of the extra authentication, Sheth says. “For the card-not-present merchant, where they don’t have that today, this could be powerful.”
Pricing is still in development, but Acculynk expects to make the service available in July.
