Viewing the world of bloggers as a potential retail landscape, Jumio Inc. has broadened the availability of its webcam credit card reader software to anyone using a WordPress Foundation website, the company CEO says.
Jumio, a Mountain View, Calif.-based online payments software company, introduced Netswipe last month. The company designed the product to turn any webcam into a credit card reader, thus enabling card-present transactions online (
The move to have Netswipe software interact with WordPress websites targets a large market of bloggers or small-business owners who sell items on the same site in which they produce blogs, Jumio CEO Daniel Mattes tells PaymentsSource.
Most observers would not view a blogging website as needing credit card payment capabilities, but many of those sites are operated by bloggers who produce all kinds of things, Mattes says.
“We are thinking of handcrafts, creative writing work, software applications, all of these things,” Mattes says. “Think of their website as their own little lemonade stand.”
WordPress Foundation initially created WordPress as a blog tool, but its publishing platform has allowed many small and midsize businesses to manage websites, Mattes explains.
“Incorporating a payments system is usually a process that requires programming skills, but a WordPress plug-in can be completed by anyone who manages a website through any content-management system,” Mattes says. “The Netswipe plug-in enables all of those users to add a secure payment [offering] in just a few clicks.”
Netswipe enables online card-present transactions because the merchant can complete a sale as if he were at any other point-of-sale cash register or terminal, according to Jumio.
To complete a transaction with a business website using Netswipe, the customer briefly holds his credit card in front of his computer webcam. Through secure video streaming, Jumio’s image-analyzing servers recognize and verify the credit card details. No snapshot image is taken and no data used for the payment are stored on the computer, according to Jumio.
The new Netswipe plug-in also allows visitors to WordPress websites to place donations or settle previous bills. All payments are managed through a free Jumio account, the company states.
Jumio’s webcam-based payment option is another in a line of interesting payments schemes unfolding all over the world facing hurdles to succeed, contends one analyst.
“Any time you are introducing a new way to securely obtain credit card information for payment, it takes an enormous effort to change consumer behavior,” Todd Ablowitz, president of Centennial, Col.-based Double Diamond Group LLC, tells Payments Source. “Explaining it to the customer on how it works and how the information will be secure is becoming the biggest challenge to these companies trying to develop a card-not-present method.”
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