Jumio, Card.io Think Cameras Should Handle Card Authentication

Though near field communications continues to get legitimate attention as the communications method "of the future" for mobile payments, there are lots of ways to handle the communications.

Jumio thinks "webcams" can do the job. And, in fact, Jumio continues to believe that payments made by plastic cards still will be relevant in the future, especially for growing volumes of online commerce.

Jumio, an online payments start-up created by Jajah founder Daniel Mattes, thinks it makes sense to read online credit card payments made by scanning a card with a webcam.

"Netswipe" is designed to support online retailers, not physical retailers.  the technology allows online retailers to easily process a debit or credit card payment by having a user just hold up their card to their webcam. The video is encrypted and streamed to Jumio’s servers, which extract the card number and information and processes the payment.



Card.io. also thinks visual verification methods using cameras will continue to make sense, while AisleBuyer thinks bar codes are a reasonable approach.

Jumio uses a computer vision approach to authenticate cards. For example, by analyzing the video stream, Jumio can confirm that it’s an actual card and not just a copy of a credit card. It can detect the raised lettering and can determine if it is plastic, or whether it appears to have metal inside.

Jumio aims to make an online payment like a card-present, point-of-sale transaction. Users still need to enter in their credit card security code manually. But because the card information is entered through the camera and the code is typed with an onscreen keypad using a mouse or track pad, malicious key-loggers can’t detect the credit card information, Mattes argues.

Jumio plans to charge small merchants 2.75 percent per transaction or 50 cents a scan if they want to use their own payment processor. Medium-sized merchants can integrate Jumio’s payment modules without becoming PCI compliant, while large merchants can directly integrate into Jumio’s payment platform.

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