Yapital Signs Multi-Year Deal with ReD to Protect Payments

Yapital Financial AG has signed a five-year agreement with security and payment gateway provider ReD to deliver fraud protection services for its European payment system.

Luxembourg-based Yapital, a licensed electronic money institution in Europe, offers consumers online, mobile, in-store and invoice payments.  "ReD is protecting Yapital's card-not-present transactions as well as point-of-sale transactions that happen via the Yapital mobile application," ReD spokesperson Felicity O'Brien states in an e-mail.

The ReD Shield security service will allow Yapital to verify transactions in real time and enhance fraud detection through collected data and geo-location of IP addresses, the companies state in a March 6 press release.

The one-click "Pay with Yapital" system operates through a mobile app that allows consumers to connect their smartphones to a Yapital account using a QR code and PIN, and then make mobile payments by scanning QR codes displayed by merchants. Users fund the Yapital account by linking a bank or credit card account.

Yapital users can also make online payments through encrypted credentials or use a Yapital MasterCard, the company says.

Merchants or service providers who accept Yapital payments can place a QR code on their invoices for consumers to scan and initiate bill payments. Yapital makes it as easy as possible for merchants to start accepting Yapital payments, says Philip Grossklaus, Yapital spokesman, in an e-mail.

On-line merchants need to integrate Yapital through a free plug-in at Magento marketplace or Oxid eSales, Grossklaus says.

"Yapital offers tailored solutions that fit the merchant's existing infrastructure," Grossklaus adds.

ReD did nearly a year of work with Yapital prior to the five-year agreement for fraud protection, Grossklaus says.

"Yapital's cross-channel payment solution is a significant innovation and the perfect platform to demonstrate our real-time screening capabilities," Manish Patel, regional president for EMEA and Latin America at ReD, states in the press release.

Yapital will work closely with ReD analysts to monitor and refine rules, and "continually improve fraud prevention performance and adapt to the changing behavior of fraudsters," Patel says.

London-based ReD, formerly known as Retail Decisions, added Internet Protocol geolocation technology to ReD Shield two years ago to help merchants deny or delay transactions deemed potentially fraudulent.

ReD, which also has an Edison, N.J. office in the U.S., says it operates independently of any card scheme in providing protection for merchants, payment service providers, issuers, acquirers, processors and switch networks.

Yapital was established in 2011 as a unit of the online retailer Otto Group. Yapital's cross-channel payment system launched in the summer of 2013. The company added Bluetooth Low Energy wireless technology last month to its POSCard product, which links smartphones and a point of sale terminal. The BLE product is designed for areas in which terminals may or may not have mobile network coverage, such as the many shops located underground in European cities.