Jumio Makes Credit Card Processing Easy And Safe

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We’ve been following payment processor Square, owned by the same folks who own Twitter, for some time now. But there’s about to be a whole new level of competition in the mobile payment processing arena, and this one looks to make credit cards not only safe, but incredibly easy. It’s called Netswipe from a company called Jumio, and they look to make taking a credit card as easy as taking a picture.

Basically, with Netswipe, you’ll need a webcam, and an actual credit card. With those two things in hand, you’ll then be able to take a photo of the credit card–numbers, holograms and all–and then upload said photos via an encrypted channel to a central processing center, which then verifies the card’s authenticity and runs the relevant charges.

You can actually use this right now, on some web sites that offer the flash-based version of Jumio, and a mobile version is reportedly in the works. It’s being described as “Square without hardware” by Jumio’s own CEO, and it’s not hard to see where he got that description.

On the one hand, it’s not hard to see some value in a service that depends much more on the physical credit card itself than on its numbers. Right now, you don’t need your credit card with you so much as you need its various numbers, especially if you’re shopping online. It also does a number on the keylogger concept, as there aren’t any keystrokes involved. However, it does pose a whole new risk, as if anyone manages to land a picture of your credit card, it would open up a whole new frontier of fraud. Though Jumio may be adapted, in the not too distant future, to require a face photo and / or driver’s license photos to boot, and each successive layer makes theft that much harder to accomplish.

It’s an interesting idea, though I don’t look for it to pull a lot of momentum out from under Square any time soon. But what do you guys think? Think Jumio’s got the right idea in terms of credit card safety? Or do you think this is an idea that should have stayed on the drawing board? It’s your call to make, so head down to the comments section and make it!