Vivotech Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based contactless technology company, is adding encryption services from Voltage Security Inc. to transactions made with Vivotech’s Vivopay products.
The additional layer of security will not significantly affect contactless transactions’ speed, Mohammad Khan, Vivotech president and founder, tells PaymentsSource.
In a contactless transaction the Voltage technology will treat sensitive cardholder data the same as for a magnetic stripe transaction, Khan says.
Track 1 and track 2 data changes each time a contactless card is used, which prevents the data from being used again, he says.
“This means contactless and Near Field Communication card data cannot be used to create a fraudulent (counterfeited) card to do a successful payment transaction,” Khan says.
Vivotech still believes that it is important to secure parts of account number information from contactless and NFC transactions through end-to-end encryption to provide security for the account number information.”
The speed of a contactless transaction, one of the hallmarks of this payment technology, will not be greatly affected by the encryption technology, Khan says. Encryption adds a “few” milliseconds, he says. A contactless transaction—from the tap to approval—takes between two to three seconds on a point-of-sale terminal using a high-speed data connection, Khan says.
Vivotech also uses encryption technology from Semtek, a San Diego-based payment security company. Voltage is based in Palo Alto, Calif.
Khan says Vivotech’s encryption services are available for all types of transactions. Vivotech expects to launch the Voltage and Semtek services in the fourth quarter. Khan would not disclosing pricing for the services.
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