Equifax/Jumio Plans To Transform Point of Sale

Credit bureau and information-solutions provider Equifax Inc. on April 3 announced a partnership with Jumio Inc. to develop various cloud-based solutions toward a more secure, streamlined mobile-payment experience for consumers and retailers.

Among the venture’s first targets is online merchant shopping cart abandonment. By leveraging Equifax 1-Touch Services and Jumio’s proprietary Netverify and Netswipe technology, Equifax said it will be able to auto-fill the personally identifiable information, including pre-enrolled
card data, needed to complete a transaction on a mobile device. The cloud-based service uses tokenization to protect and store card data away from the merchant’s own databases, thus reducing their PCI-complianc scope.

The relationship is going to take a lot of barriers and friction out of the online checkout process, Mike Orlando, Jumio chief sales officer, told PYMNTS.com in an interview. “When fiction points are removed, everyone wins,” he said.

The service will be made available within a couple of months, Anand Krishnaswamy, Equifax vice president of mobile commerce and payments, said in the interview.

Merchants will be able to support the services within their mobile apps using either an application programming interface or software development kit, Orlando noted. Pricing has not yet been made public, but the cost to merchants will be bundled, with the two companies splitting the proceeds later, he said. Consumers will pay nothing for the service.

WebSpace Commerce in September also chose Jumio to help fight mobile-cart abandonment using the Netswipe card-scanning technology, which uses the camera on smartphones to capture relevant data on cards. A year earlier, Travelocity struck a deal to use Netswipe in the online travel checkout process used on its iPhone app, Hotel Deals by lastminute.com.

With the new solutions Equifax and Jumio plan to launch, once a consumer scans information from a card once, the companies will be able to preload the information on any participating merchant’s site, when the consumer authorizes them to do so.

Equifax said it will use its consumer information resources, such as credit scores and billing information, in tandem with Jumio’s authentication and validation capabilities to reduce fraud, increase purchases and ultimately improve the consumer mobile commerce experience. Jumio, which launched in 2010, specializes in payments and ID scanning and validation products for mobile and Web transactions. In September, it added facial-detection technology, called Face Match, to its Netverify line of online and mobile ID-verification services.

The companies also will integrate the solutions with the Equifax Mobile Wallet functionality, allowing consumers to access their cards on their mobile device to use for purchases. Shoppers may scan their credit card with their smartphone, or use their smartphones in-store at the checkout counter to complete the transaction using whatever technology the merchant supports, such as NFC or QR codes.

Users also may opt in for instant, store-brand credit card offers. When stores extend the line of credit to users, they can instantly use the card on their mobile device, and no consumer credit data are stored or cached on their smartphones.