More and more platforms are adopting this contactless system with tokens to securely store customer data
Contactless or contactless payments have become very popular in the last year. This has made the representatives of the main credit card brands in the country bet more on these technologies and look for new applications for all the possibilities that they allow.
Produbanco, in alliance with Visa and Banco ProCredit with Mastercard, have incorporated digital contactless payment solutions. This is Promerica Pay, a mobile application that together with the exclusive digital wallets of Produbanco and, on the other hand, Fitbit Pay and Garmin Pay, which work for both Banco ProCredit and Produbanco and allow you to pay by simply bringing your phone or smart watches to a POS or payment terminal.
At Produbanco we constantly innovate, as part of our digital transformation. Within this scope and with the arrival of the pandemic, we accelerate our processes to incorporate digital solutions that respond to new needs. Making a payment just by bringing a mobile phone or smart watch closer to the digital economy, while guaranteeing an agile, fast and secure service ”, explained Sebastián Quevedo, Vice President of Payment Methods at Produbanco.
“We understand that consumption is not the same after a few months of isolation. Many people who were previously reluctant to use new technologies are turning to them to protect their health. At Banco ProCredit, before the pandemic we already had 99% of transactions automated thanks to our Direct Banking model implemented three years ago. This allowed our clients, in times of a pandemic, not to have to expose themselves to leaving home, because they already made active use of digital channels in a simple, agile and safe way. Now we continue to innovate to make our clients’ financial lives even easier ”, adds Gustavo Urquieta, Head of Comprehensive Security at Banco ProCredit.
Promerica Pay is a mobile application with contactless technology. It allows you to pay just by bringing your cell phone to a contactless card reader. This requires downloading the app and registering Visa cards, whether debit or credit.
multiple layers of security
“At Visa, the safety of our products and services is a priority. We are excited about the implementation of the first ‘tokenized’ wallet in Ecuador, a technology that provides users with multiple layers of security that act in the background of each transaction to prevent fraud, ”said Angélica Vallona, general manager of Visa Ecuador.
The use of these tokens consists of a technology that allows the protection of transactions carried out with a credit card on a mobile device, such as a cell phone or smart watch, on web pages, applications or in establishments with POS.
Guadalupe Durán, General Manager of Mastercard Ecuador, highlighted the importance of transaction security when using smart devices such as Garmin and Fitbit or Banco ProCredit Mastercard debit cards, thanks to the adoption of tokenization, a security standard that protects card information when used for contactless payments or e-commerce.
Tokenization assigns an alternate number (token) to each business in which we are paying with the Mastercard card so that the real number of the card is not exposed at any time, avoiding fraud in the event that the business is hacked or its exposed data ”, added Durán.
The codes are created by companies such as VISA and Mastercard, among others, that act as providers of tokens (Token Service Providers, TSP) and provide them to mobile payment or e-commerce platforms so that they can use them in transactions instead of the customer’s card details.
Thus, when a user enters their card details in a virtual wallet such as Google Pay or Apple Pay, these platforms request the token from one of these providers, who must first ask the customer’s bank to verify the data. When the data is verified, they generate the code and send it to the user’s device. Once this unique number is created, it is irreversibly and irreplaceably linked to the customer’s device. In this way, every time the person makes a payment, the platform will be able to authorize the operation just by sharing this code, without having to expose the real data.
