We are proud to introduce Netswipe: The  solution that reduces fraud for merchants and that makes online and mobile payments easier and more secure than ever.

Today we unveiled a new technology solution for businesses to increase security and ease of use for online and mobile credit card payments. The patent pending Netswipe solution turns a webcam into a secure credit card reader that allows merchants to more easily and efficiently accept payments online.

Here’s what founder Daniel Mattes has to say:

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.

Consumers love the ease-of-use and the smooth experience associated with completing a transaction. 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.

Bringing Card Present Transactions Online

Netswipe is the first and only solution that enables online card-present-transactions: Checking out just like at the point of sale (POS). To complete a transaction, consumers briefly hold their credit card in front of their webcam. Through secure videostreaming, the credit card details are being recognized and verfied. No snapshot image is being taken, no data is stored on the computer that is used for the payment.

A More Efficient Payment Technology for Merchants

Business owners can implement Jumio’s Netswipe service into their payment process to reduce fraud and increase sales due to a heightened user experience.

During our pilot phase, we have conducted a customer survey with a focus group who have used Netswipe.  Amongst other impressive numbers, the churn rate decreased significantly from 52% to 21%.

With the launch, Jumio has introduced three products for merchants that simplify the online payment process: Netswipe Start, Netswipe Scanning and Netswipe Processing. Additional products including a mobile solution will be released later this year.

Partners, High Profile Board of Directors

Jumio’s pre-launch negotiations attracted an impressive list of partners. Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, member of the Jumio board of directors, previously led a Series A funding round of US$ 6.5m and will oversee Jumio’s rollout into the Asian market.

The Facebook co-founder has the word.

I am very excited to be involved with Jumio, which has developed a ground breaking technology that fulfills two of the most important aspects of payments processing: heightened security and a simplified user experience.

Additionally, Jumio’s advisory board includes former executives from Google, Amazon and NASA.

Spam is down, alternative attack schemes are up.

According to a report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), cybercriminals (a great word) are targeting classified advertising sites at an increasing rate.

Security Week published this graph. 6,6% of all attacks are directed at the classifieds sector. In 2010, this sector showed the highest growth. Popular platform for the attackers are obvious sites like Craigslist and Autotrader.

Naturally the biggest fields of online crime are finance and online payment services (at 33% and 38% respectively). As Jumio is in the final stages of development, these statistics and possible counter measures are highly interesting.

Here’s the article, and the full pdf report here.

If both Google and Apple are talking Near Field Communication, there must be something to it. So what’s with the technology behind NFC?

Computerworld gives a pretty solid inside look. And it turns out that, as usual, our friends in Japan have already been using it casually for… ahem… “ever” (ie. longer than two months. Which is, of course, in tech-speak “forever”).
In the near future the technology will serve its purpose in the POS arena. It is very convenient for the end user and helps merchants to keep costs low. A process as simple as fishing the credit card out of the pocket.

Security

With the technological aspects covered, let’s look at the security issues we have to deal with: Identity fraud is one of the major pains, a multibillion-dollar crime causing U.S. retail merchants fraud losses of $191 billion annually alone (Javelin Strategy & Research 2009). The costs caused by fraud are enormous for retailers and are dampening consumer confidence when it comes to online shopping.

Intermediate Steps

The way it looks at the moment, the cause for concern seems justified. Complementary solutions are still missing to create a secure connection between the credit card and the NFC chip. A simple step in between to validate the card would make the whole process much more of a secure mobile solution.

Near Field Communication has a bright future ahead, with one in six mobile subscribers worldwide likely to own a device enabled with NFC capabilities by 2014 according to Juniper Research. Interesting times!

To celebrate our very first Jumio holiday season with you, we came up with a special Jumio version of the most beautiful christmas carol of all time. So please sit back, light a candle, maybe open a bottle of wine and enjoy…

(Thank you Jasmin for the impressive performance.)

Season’s greetings from everyone here at Jumio!

Sounds like a costly coalition, doesn’t it? Here are some things to keep in mind when paying for the presents for your loved ones that we found on the UK Telegraph website. Play it safe when you do your Christmas shopping (applies to all other shopping occasions as well, obviously).

First up, the safest way to buy is actually the credit card. Why? In the UK, you are protected as a customer through the Consumer Credit Act 1974. That means, if the online shop you are buying from goes bust before your goods are delivered and can’t reimburse you, your credit card provider will be liable for your costs.

When using credit cards for your online shopping, keep a few things in mind.
- The actual page you are asked to put your credit card number in, has to begin with ”https” rather than just ”http” to indicate that you are on a secure page.
- You will always be asked to enter the Secure Code additonally to your credit card number.
- Credit card companies will never ask you to send them your details.
- See if you can check the seller’s rating on shopping websites to get an idea, how trustworthy they are.
More pointers and the whole article can be found here.

Happy Christmas shopping everyone!

Here’s our two cents about this news topic:

New York Post

The Huffington Post

CNN Money

LA Times

It’s interesting to observe that these major telecom companies (AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile) would choose to address the payment problem on their own, rather than leverage the compentancies of the major credit card companies. Why would they want to walk down this path on their own?” asks Daniel Mattes, internationally recognized IT and payment expert and founder of Jumio.com

Credit cards have been the world’s most convenient payment solution. In 2009, there were 56.4 billion credit, debit and prepaid card transactions, totaling $3.39 trillion dollars. (Nilson Report, February 2010.) Credit card companies are doing a great job at “card present” transactions, by providing fast processing, low fees for merchants and excellent service for the customer. In the online world, however, where there are “card not present” transactions taking place, significant improvement is needed. According to Javelin Strategy & Research (2009), the annual cost of credit card fraud is $191 billion. Compare this to the consumer energy costs of the entire USA per year which is at $200 billion. What’s missing is that credit card companies have not been able to convince the PC and smartphone industry to equip their devices with a credit card reader.

The world of online payments places a heavy burden on the merchants. “Not only do online merchants have to deal with the cost of the fraud itself, but they also bear the cost of maintaining a security and fraud protection team, and face the opportunity cost of lost purchases and customers due to false postives, as well as paying higher transaction fees overall as compared to brick and mortar retailers,” says Daniel Mattes.

It seems that the big credit card players have rested too long on their laurels. Now is the time for innovation and for merchant and customer friendly service.

The holidays!
At this time of year, millions of people are spending millions of Dollars, Euros, Pounds, Yen, Zloty on their well-deserved time off work. Mostly somewhere in the sun, relaxing pool-side, lake-side or ocean-side with a frosty drink. Niiice!

We here at Jumio (temporary headquarters pictured right) are taking things generally easy, but being in the business we are in (payments, that is) we feel professionally obliged to ponder the aspect of payment when heading out of town for a vacation. This is how we stumbled across this article, giving out some scary stats on online holiday scams. Feel free to read here.

For those of you too relaxed to click on the link and read the whole article, here’s everything in a nutshell.

- Confirm the authenticity of travel providers before handing over payment details. Also applies to rental shops and the like.

- Check if a website is secure when entering you payment details. (A padlock symbol in the bottom right of the browser window or for the payment pages to begin with ‘https://’)

- Keep your receipts (usually PDFs sent to you) to keep track of your payments.

- Log out of sites when you are done with your bookings and payments.

(These are just a few tips, but you can find a more detailed list here.)

In some cases there is a lot of trust involved between provider and customer, especially if you book ahead. Think of a small rental place that only takes cash for their motor scooters or sail boats for example. Jumio, by the way, is working on raising that level of trust. For your next vacation.

Here I am, sitting in the French part of the Silicon Valley (Le Vallee, as we call it), and it’s time to moan.

Why is it that something we have to do daily, wherever we go and whoever we deal with can be clustered with unnecessary obstacles and frustrating limitations? All through the day, money changes hands. Clumsy cash transactions, cumbersome bank transfers. I know, it’s all necessary, it’s all good, but I feel there has to be a way to simplify it all.

Stating the obvious now: Jumio is working on such a solution. We’ll let you know the details in due time. But for now, let’s look at facts and misconceptions about how we pay or can’t pay in our daily lives.

As a private person I can’t accept credit cards. This might not be true in some countries, but can be quite an issue in others. No universal solution there yet.

Money transfer requires a bank. Again: True in some cases, false in others. Small payments are usually cash transactions that don’t require the electronic or personal assistance of a bank. But then again, that means that you always have to carry around a bit of cash for that quick hot dog or a can of Coke on the street corner.

Credit card fraud is a major concern. And these days, credit card fraud without the actual credit card is the way to go if you’re a hip card fraudster. Phishing is a phenomenon not just attributed to following a popular band, but a real concern for online credit card users. Credit card not present at transaction fraud is on the rise. That’s a fact.

We are not here to cause paranoia. We are here to create awareness for payment issues. And we’re here to make it better. We’ll tell you more next time and over the coming months.