The Secure Remote Payment Council Jan. 14 named former NYCE Payments Network LLC CEO Dennis Lynch as its first chairperson and Paul Tomasofsky, president of Two Sparrows Consulting, as the organization’s president and executive director.
The organization, which announced its formation in October, does not plan to develop standards for Internet PIN-debit or mobile transactions but instead will promote a set of best practices for payments companies involved in those types of initiatives (
“Things are not operating horribly in the e-commerce marketplace, but everyone who is involved in this council believes things can operate better and more optimally,” Lynch tells PaymentsSource.
The council’s directors include representatives from such companies as CardinalCommerce Corp., Heartland Payment Systems Inc. and Shazam Inc. Ronald Congemi, former CEO of First Data Corp.’s debit services unit, also was elected a director. Paul Turgeon, president of Payments & Processing Consultants Inc., was appointed as the council’s special advisor. Turgeon originally came up with the idea to form the council.
“We’re creating a gathering place for those interested groups to help establish some best practices and get that going in one direction for everyone so that [those practices] can be maintained,” Turgeon told PaymentsSource in October.
The council has established three “high-level objectives” for 2010, according to Lynch.
Growing the organization’s membership is first on the list, which Lynch says thus far has not been difficult. “I was surprised that people who are running around with their respective businesses could recognize it was important to take the time and energy to really concentrate on what can be done better [in this space],” Lynch says.
The council also wants to become the leading resource for marketplace data, including information about payment-transaction volume, fraud losses and consumer trends. “We also want this to be the forum for this kind of coordination and accelerate the ability to enhance the security [of remote payments],” Lynch adds.
Reaction to the council’s efforts has been positive.
George Peabody, director of Mercator Advisory Group’s emerging technologies advisory service, tells PaymentsSource card-not-present transactions are “a way of life,” and securing them should be a priority. “Having an organization come up with a set of best practices will help us all have these payments happen more readily,” he says.
The council’s biggest challenge may be getting the involved organizations to use the best practices it comes up with because they will not be required to do so.
To address that, the organization will form industry-specific subcouncils to identify what they see as their key needs to enhance the security of remote consumer payments, Lynch says. Those subcouncils likely will include merchant processors and card issuers, he adds.
“We weigh what’s most important to them, get those things established and then bring the industry councils together to [determine] how we’re going to bring other recommendations to other bodies [such as merchants],” Lynch says.
