Ingenico ePayments Launches TapHero For Online Payments Via Mobile

Ingenico ePayments, the online and mobile commerce division of Ingenico Group, and Ingenico Labs, its innovation department, announced Tuesday (Oct. 25) they have jointly developed a completely new way to make secure online payments on a mobile device, simply by tapping a payment card against it.

In a press release, the company said TapHero is a new, experimental technology that combines elements from both card-present and card-not-present payments and will enable smartphones equipped with an NFC reader to simply read the payment data from the card’s chip and auto-populate all the fields required to make a mobile payment. Furthermore, Ingenico is adding a feature layer that simulates a card-present payment for increased security.

Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, have overtaken traditional desktop computers as the primary source of traffic for many online businesses. However, consumers are less likely to convert their visits into sales when shopping on their mobile devices, in large part because, on many online stores, the checkout process is not optimized to provide a seamless mobile experience. The small screen and touch interface make entering data, such as credit card numbers, cumbersome, leading many consumers to abort their purchase. With its Ingenico Connect offering, Ingenico ePayments already provides merchants with a suite of tools and services for mobile optimization. TapHero will add a completely new way to remove obstacles for consumers and enable an easy, seamless payment process that boosts conversion of visits into sales.

TapHero is easy to integrate into a merchant’s checkout page and will automatically detect the presence of an NFC reader. As such, the majority of smartphones currently on the market already support the technology, and those that do not will not be presented the option to avoid confusion. Consumers are not required to download anything, register their data or create an account to use the solution. Sensitive card data is never stored on the mobile device to further enhance privacy and security. Ingenico clients will benefit from the ability to simply add the functionality as part of their Ingenico Connect integration.