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ProPay Inc., an Orem, Utah-based independent sales organization, has developed a card reader for mobile, small and home-based merchants. Launched in late July but announced publicly only recently, the MicroSecure Card Reader is large enough for a card's magnetic stripe to be swiped through it, but it lacks a PIN pad or screen. Bryce Thacker, ProPay executive vice president of sales and marketing, tells CardLine sister publication ISO&Agent the device encrypts the transaction data at the swipe. When the merchant connects the device to a PC equipped with ProPay's software, the transaction data are relayed to ProPay's server, which decrypts and processes the information. The reader also can accept transactions for live authorization when connected to a computer. ProPay had three reasons for producing the reader, Thacker says. Security was first. "Lots of small merchants will write down the cardholder data and then not be sure where that document is or if it's protected," Thacker says. The second reason was to expedite transaction time. A mobile merchant will save time swiping a card versus writing down information for each transaction, Thacker explains. A third reason was that merchants dislike the difficulty of reading credit card numbers. ProPay has sold more than 3,000 readers. The company is considering selling readers in Canada and may enable ISOs to sell them as well, Thacker says.
