mConfirm Prevents Credit Card Fraud Using your Cell Phone

by Shane McGlaun

Secure Identity Systems (SIS) has a new technology it is offering to US banks that will be free of charge to bank customers. The technology is called mConfirm and is a method of preventing credit card fraud by stopping transactions when the card holder isn’t present.

The technology uses any cellular phone to confirm that the card owner is in the same physical location as the credit card at the time of a transaction. SIS says that the service doesn’t require a GPS enabled cell phone or changes to any of the existing credit card processing infrastructure.

SIS says that the system currently works with some of the most popular brands of handsets around including the iPhone, BlackBerry, LG, AT&T, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and even pre-paid phones. The system performs a risk score as transactions are processed by looking at the card holder’s transaction history. SIS says that the system will work if the cell phone isn’t available or the customer isn’t enrolled by alerting the bank of possible fraud by other means.

What’s not clear to me is if the service will allow a credit card to be used if a card holder is signed up for the program and doesn’t have their cell phone on them at the time the transaction is made. I could see this causing some headaches if for example you were on vacation and your cell phone was dead when you tried to make a charge to your credit card.

Via SIS