Jumio Makes Credit Card Processing Easy And Safe [Jumio's Netswipe Mobile Payments System Makes Taking A Credit Card As Easy As Taking A Picture]

Posted on TFTS by Steve Anderson on Tuesday, 26. July 2011 under: Audio,Visual, Cameras & Camcorders, Mobile/Cell Phones, Net Resources

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!

Michael
I don’t see any compelling reasons why I would want to adopt Netswipe as I am quite happy to use plastic cards the way it is being used today. Only if someone can come up with a way to make both online and offline payments quicker and easier without having to carry around the plastic cards, that would make it much more compelling. So far all the mobile payment solutions work only in the offline (brick- and-mortar) transactions or online trades but not both equally. If someone comes up with a single user interface for both online and offline trades with security and ease, then that would be of great interest and value to me.

http://nexus404.com/Blog Steve Andersen
Michael–the biggest thing here, I think, is for smaller businesses who want to collect credit card payments but are concerned about all the machinery. You get someone out in, say, a farmer’s market or flea market who wants to take credit cards, but can’t find power and internet hookups, then something like this would be great. And as for payments, some think it may be safer to show your credit card to an encrypted video feed than to just type some numbers.