PSD2: Biometrics by Computop Allows Merchants to Takeover Two Factor Authentication From Banks

LONDON and BAMBERG, Germany, Aug. 2, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Computop, the global payment processor, today announced Biometrics by Computop, its new PSD2 compliant biometric authentication service for online merchants and banks. With Biometrics by Computop, merchants can take over the strong customer authentication (SCA) in order to avoid banks having to run their own two factor authentication during the payment process. Computop's biometric authentication service complies with the secure FIDO standard (Fast Identity Online) and is suitable for PSD2 compliant strong customer authentication in online retail.

PSD2, Visa and MasterCard all allow customer authentication to be trusted to third parties. Computop Biometrics enables merchants to process the biometric authentication of their customers in advance avoiding the necessity for banks to apply their own two factor authentication (2FA) during the sensitive payment process.

Smartphone users typically opt for safe and convenient biometric authentication using fingerprint, face- or voice recognition. FIDO compliant Biometrics by Computop enables merchants to apply biometric authentication at an early stage in the shopping process when customers are logging into the merchant's app or online store or during the checkout process. Following this, Computop Biometrics generates a digital signature that can be transmitted to issuers together with other 3D Secure 2.0 data as proof that the merchant has already applied PSD2-compliant strong customer authentication. 

Running strong customer authentication in advance allows merchants to avert any problems associated with 2FA during the payment process which helps to improve conversion. Computop is already implementing that process with a number of significant retailers.

"What we are providing with Computop Biometrics is a host of great advantages for retailers. Biometric authentication can be applied to app or shop logins in order to avoid fraudulent account takeovers. This also helps the customer experience, because biometric authentication is so much better than a typical PIN-TAN process," said Ralf Gladis, CEO at Computop. "For merchants there is increased complexity with the number of different authentication methods used by banks, but if they are able to process strong consumer authentication themselves, the customer journey will be standardised and easier to support. In addition, the whole process is GDPR compliant, and consumers can be confident in knowing that biometric data will never leave their own device. Computop's solution will verify cryptographic keys but will never touch cryptographic data."

Computop Biometrics is available as a cloud service for access control, for login procedures and for payment authentication. App developers will be provided with Computop's Biometrics SDK for iOS and Android. Using biometric authentication for payment authentication will be possible at a later time after the introduction of 3D Secure 2.0 on September 14^th.

About Computop – the payment people

As one of the very first payment service providers, Computop offers its customers around the world local and innovative omnichannel solutions for payment processing and fraud prevention. The Computop Paygate payment platform enables seamless integrated payment processes for e-commerce, at POS and on mobile devices. With this internally developed software, retailers and service providers have the flexibility and freedom to choose from over 350 payment methods enabling them to specifically tailor their payment options per country. Technologies such as biometric authentication and self-learning algorithms improve security and convenience for retailers and consumers alike.

Computop, a global player with its head office in Germany and locations in China, England and the USA, has been servicing large international companies in the service, retail, mobility, gaming and travel industries for more than 20 years. These companies include global brands such as Bigpoint, C&A, Fossil, the entire Otto Group, Sixt and Swarovski. Computop also provides its payment system to banks and financial service providers as a white-label solution. Through its customer network and collaboration with the global marketplace Rakuten, Computop processes commercial payment transactions for more than 16,000 retailers annually, with a combined value of USD 34 billion. With its individual and secure solutions, Computop makes a major contribution to the future of international payment processing.

www.computop.com

SOURCE Computop