IMGCAP(1)]
ShoppersChoice.com, a luxury cooking retailer, will begin accepting PIN-debit cards for online purchases this week, Corey Tisdale, the company's chief operating officer, tells ATM&Debit News, a CardLine sister publication. "We will begin accepting PIN-debit transactions Thursday as soon as Elavon, our processor, has completed its final tests," Tisdale says. Elavon, a unit of U.S. Bancorp, is partnering with Acculynk Inc. and EFT networks Accel/Exchange and NYCE Payments Network LLC to process PIN-debit purchases online for participating card issuers and merchants, says Ashish Bahl, Acculynk CEO. Based in Atlanta, Acculynk integrates its service and software into a merchant's online checkout system. When a cardholder is ready to pay, Acculynk's system checks the debit card number the buyer enters to determine if it can be used with a PIN. If it can, a virtual PIN pad appears on the computer monitor. The consumer enters his four-digit PIN using his computer's mouse into Acculynk's scrambling PIN pad, which encrypts the PIN and card information. Acculynk then notifies the cardholder the PIN has been accepted. Once the transaction is complete, the PIN pad disappears. Acculynk and its partners call their service PaySecure. Lower fraud rates and lower interchange rates convinced ShoppersChoice executives to become the first online retailer to participate in the pilot. "If 5% to 10% of our transactions are paid with PIN-debit cards, we will recover our return on investment in six months," Tisdale says of the lower interchange costs PIN-debit transactions incur.
