New technology developed by Mountain View, Calif., firm Jumio Inc. is designed to turn online card-not-present (CNP) transactions into online card-present transactions. The company believes its new product suite, Netswipe Start, Netswipe Scanning and Netswipe Processing, is a more secure online option for consumers and promises to introduce the technology to smart phones by mid-September 2011.
Simply put, Netswipe turns a computer webcam into a card reader. "Jumio bridges the gap between the security and trust of credit card payments at the point of sale and the availability and convenience of modern day online transactions," Jumio founder and Chief Executive Officer Daniel Mattes said. "At a time when both consumers and businesses are looking for more efficient and safe ways to make credit card purchases, Netswipe promises to usher in a new era of disruption that makes online payments easier than ever before."
Mattes co-founded the Voice over Internet Protocol service JaJah Inc. and was with that company until 2009 when it was purchased by Telefonica S.A. for $207 million.
According to Jumio, Netswipe offers consumers simplicity and merchants security. Consumers use Netswipe to make an online payment by showing their credit cards to their webcams and typing in the card verification value numbers found on the back of the cards. The technology uses a Flash-based application to access the computer's webcam.
When the card is passed in front of the webcam, the program checks card authenticity. It can "see" whether the card is plastic and whether the numbers on the card are properly embossed. It can also detect if the card's hologram is real.
On the security side of the transaction, Netswipe does not photograph the credit card, and no data is stored on the payment computer. All data, including the video stream data, is encrypted and password protected. Data storage complies with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard regulations. Only merchants with the proper passwords can access the data from their accounts.
The company indicated it is working on adapting Netswipe to eventually read government documents, which would give it the ability to allow transactions using other tokens such as driver's licenses. The technology may even open a door for facial recognition in credit card verification.
Jumio charges 2.75 percent on each transaction for processing. The customer receives monthly statements with charges deducted from payments.
There are no charges to consumers and installation is free for merchants. If an online customer does not have a webcam, the payment can still be made. A manual payment form is automatically displayed, and the customer can enter data manually. Netswipe neither has nor needs access to the merchant website.
Jumio said Netswipe works for and is available to merchants of all sizes - from the tiniest micro merchant to the largest retail behemoth.
Jumio reported an early Netswipe survey conducted in the first two quarters of 2011 with 2,500 early Netswipe users produced impressive findings.
The survey found 52 percent of online retail customers abort shopping with items still in their shopping carts. When consumers in the survey used Netswipe, only 21 percent aborted payment while shopping.
When CNP transactions were conducted without Netswipe, 6 percent of the transactions were later found to have been wrongly rejected legitimate payments. With Netswipe the number of wrongly rejected legitimate payments fell to less than 1 percent. Netswipe does not currently work with prepaid cards. Netswipe technology is patent pending.
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