Bluefin is gearing up for an August full of mobile payment discussions. Our Chief Innovation Officer, Ruston Miles, is participating in two key mobile payment conferences – Connect 2015 Mobile Innovation Summit and Mobile Payments Conference – as a guest panel speaker covering the industry’s best practices for mobile payment security.
The CONNECT Mobile Innovation Summit explores the many opportunities that retail and restaurant enterprises have for leveraging mobile and digital channels to build their brands, increase sales and improve customer engagement, experience and loyalty.Mobile devices have quickly become integral parts of mobilizing retail, payments, marketing and social infrastructures. The 2015 Mobile Payments Conference will include all the key topics on everyone’s mind, separate FACT from FICTION, and help you develop strategies that allow your business to adopt and align with this fast-changing industry.
See Miles’ interview from last year’s MPC, highlighting the importance of payment security.
Mobile payments is a hot topic in the payment world, and August’s payment industry events focus on the changes of the mobile payment landscape. Key topics cover the technological advancements the mobile space is making at neck-breaking pace and how companies can incorporate mobile payments into their business strategy. All the movement in the mobile space begs the question, how important is security in mobile payments?
Mix the weekly reports on data breaches and new malware threats constantly popping up with the fact that 90% of Americans own a mobile phone, and there is no wonder why mobile security is top of mind for merchants as well as consumers. It may seem like securing mobile payments is a daunting task, but the hacks on large merchants we have all read about have actually given the payments space a good knowledge base on ways to improve upon security methods.
Troy Bernard, Head of Digital Products at Discover Network, participating on a panel at Smart Card Alliance Payments Summit, weighs in on the topic of, “Changing Risk Management Through Payments Innovation,” providing some insight on where the industry should look to improve mobile payment security. For 2015, Bernard lists encryption and tokenization as two important advancements that can keep both traditional and card-not-present channels secure.
“For the millions of merchants focused on security at their point-of-sale systems, encrypting customer information at the point-of-capture whether it be a swipe, a dip, or manual entry, is an important step to protect consumers from fraud, and tokenization falls within the same realm of transforming data to the point that it poses no value to a fraudster.”
Bernard recommends two additional security layers – along with EMV – to protect card holder data, encryption and tokenization. PCI-validated Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE) encrypts cardholder data within a PCI P2PE approved point of entry device so it does not reach the merchant or enterprise system or network as clear-text cardholder data – where it could be accessible to a fraudster in the event of a data breach.
Additionally, tokenization enables merchants and enterprises to safely “store” cardholder data at rest for use in future transactions. Tokenization like P2PE, effectively renders the data useless to hackers.
Bluefin shares the layered, holistic approach to card data security, and offers PCI-validated P2PE as well as tokenization. In December 2014, Bluefin became the first company in North America to receive PCI-validation for a P2PE solution for mobile payments. Bluefin’s mobile payment solution – Quickswipe – provides enterprises, small to medium-sized businesses, and software companies with all the benefits of a complete system backed by the first North American PCI-validated Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE) solution for mobile payments.
So enjoy the break of July because mobile is going to heat up in August!
