MP conducts successful live test of innovative payment device

Nov. 5, 2012 - PRLog -- The trial included a HomePay purchase by Andrew Miller MP  - Chair of the House of Commons Science & Technology Select Committee - on Friday 26th October 2012.  Mr. Miller also formally opened Secure Electrans’ high security operations centre in Ellesmere Port.

The HomePay online Chip&PIN transaction took only a matter of moments as Mr. Miller bought a jar of homemade jam from an online merchant participating in the scheme www2.berryfreshjam.co.uk using his personal Visa card. The transaction was as quick and convenient as any Chip&PIN purchase, with the only palpable difference to existing online shopping being that no bank card, expiration date or signature stripe digits needed to be entered. Instead, Mr. Miller simply inserted his card into the HomePay device and entered his PIN into the secure keypad – just as is done at a shop or ATM.

Chris Jarman, Managing Director of Secure Electrans, assisted Mr. Miller in making his first HomePay Chip&PIN online payment. He remarked that consumers were not the only beneficiaries of the HomePay solution; there are also considerable benefits for online merchants.

Chris said: “We’re not asking the merchant to change anything, there’s just a simple redirect from their hosted checkout page when Chip&PIN is selected by the cardholder. Our solution enables what would otherwise be a card-not-present transaction to be processed as a fully EMV compliant Card-Present transaction. It’s a very low impact on the merchant and virtually no impact on the existing infrastructure as it simply reuses the existing acquirer, payment schemes and card issuers investment in Chip&PIN”.  He continued to explain: “The good news for the merchant is that they will be able to claim the lower Chip & PIN transaction fee structure rather than the higher card-not-present rate, also gaining protection against many Chargeback codes.”

Secure Electrans’ HomePay means that overheads, risks, fraud and Chargeback liability are all significantly reduced for online merchants. All transactions become card-present and PIN-verified, are processed over the secure payment connection to each HomePay device, and only then after both the cardholder device and Secure Electrans’ system have authenticated each other. PIN’s are always checked locally by the Chip&PIN card and never sent online. Ultimately this saves everyone money, from the issuers and acquirers through to online merchants. The consumer also wins in this scenario due to savings made by the banks and online merchants reducing overall costs and by dramatically reducing the risk of online identity fraud.