Intuit’s Trevor Dryer Talks Swipe Security

ISIS names issuers; MasterCard launches mobile money partnership; Target and Wal-Mart enter the ring. So many of the latest headlines have focused on getting the mobile phone more involved in payments.

But all this prognosticating belies the status quo: today, people are still paying with plastic, and the security of the swipe is as important as it’s ever been.

In light of our feature focus on safety at the point-of-sale, we thought we’d reach out to Intuit to talk about their role in helping maintain the security of the swipe. To that end, Trevor Dryer, Head of Product Management, Mobile Payments and Point-of-Sale at Intuit, answered our questions about Intuit’s GoPayment product, and how it stacks up against the competition. His responses are included below.

How does Intuit’s GoPayment swipe reader offer top-notch security to both buyers and merchants?

With products such as QuickBooks, TurboTax and Mint, Intuit protects sensitive financial information for tens of millions of people. GoPayment is no exception. GoPayment users can be reassured that their customers’ sensitive credit card information is protected through a variety of security measures Intuit has in place to protect customer data.

To protect both buyers and merchants GoPayment adheres to the Payment Card Industry (PCI) rules. Additionally, the GoPayment Card Reader is encrypted so credit card information is never stored on the phone or device, keeping customers’ credit card data safe. Encryption prevents a malicious program from being put on the phone that can intercept the card data before it’s sent to the card networks (Visa/MC/AMEX etc.) This allows GoPayment to protect sensitive consumer credit card data with encryption via both the app and card reader. Also, to protect data in transit, GoPayment adheres to online banking industry protection standards, using an https connection over SSL (Secure Socket Layer) at 128-bit encryption. This makes processing payments with GoPayment safer than processing payments with many of point-of-sale terminals.

How does Intuit stack up against the competition? Is security part of what differentiates Intuit’s GoPayment product from the offering of a competitor like Square?

Intuit’s GoPayment app came to market almost three years ago, and from the initial launch Intuit has adhered to the PCI rules. Unlike Square, GoPayment protects sensitive credit card data by encrypting card info as soon as the card is swiped. As noted above, GoPayment encrypts data on both the app and card reader, which is a feature not used by all competitors, including Square.

Additionally, the GoPayment card reader was recently redesigned to address many of the problems and challenges that users confront when using competitors’ card readers. It features a silicone sleeve that conforms to the phone or tablet to provide stability support to keep the reader from moving or spinning when swiping a card, so merchants only have to swipe a card once rather than multiple times. The new card reader has the latest generation of encryption chips, making it a safe solution for small businesses. Intuit partnered with ROAM in the past when it launched the first free GoPayment swiper, as both companies have a commitment to security. While Intuit has changed the design of their card reader, many small business users still have the GoPayment ROAM data reader, which is just as secure as the newly designed card swiper.

How many merchants are using GoPayment readers today?

We aren’t able to publically disclose our number of GoPayment users but we can say that it’s one of our fastest growing mobile apps at Intuit. So much so that we have grown the monthly number of new users by over 1,000 percent in 2011.