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iPIN |
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iPIN, an online payment platforms
company, plans to extend their payment platform to the wireless world.
Therefore, they’ve formed an alliance with Wireless Internet Center
(WIC).
iPIN has created a payment solution that can help remedy merchants’
problems associated with accepting Visa and MasterCard. The iPIN system is
entirely Web-based, and ensures the highest levels of consumer security
and privacy. For the time being, it is only being used in Europe for the
delivery of digital goods and service, but they are now rolling out their
product for hard goods in wireless devices as well.
The main idea of iPIN is having customers first set up an iPIN account
with their banks. iPIN can then link those accounts to either a
customer’s credit card, checking account, ISP provider account, wireless
account, or telephone account and thus be added on to their bills. This
eliminates the hassle of setting up a separate account for online
purchases and directs the funds to be taken out of whatever account a
customer can specify, or simply added onto an existing bill. After the
customer establishes an iPIN account, iPIN deposits a encrypted cookie on
the customer’s computer. The customer’s account information is
retrieved from iPIN servers based on the encrypted account ID in the
cookie.
Here’s how it works: When the customer goes to buy their goods, using
their own computer that has the encrypted cookie, they are asked fOr their
password. If the customer is at a foreign computer, they must also provide
a secret question and answer that was created during the iPIN account
creation process.
After the customer enters all the required information, then iPIN makes a
transaction request to the iPIN server. It sends the transaction amount.
iPIN authenticates the customer, checks the account, and returns an
authorization number. The merchant saves the authorization number in its
database, rather than account information, eliminating the security
worries.
A plus for the merchant is also the presence of the cookie on the
customer’s machine. The customer faces more difficulty claiming a
chargeback on the grounds that he didn’t make the purchase. Another
benefit to iPIN is that merchants deal with iPIN directly, so iPIN has
more incentive than typical credit card networks to resolve disputes in a
way that’s more appealing to the merchant.
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