Interswitch today unveiled five innovative solutions, which it says are expected to boost the payment industry in Nigeria and provide more secure payment solutions to financial institutions, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs), merchants and their customers.
The new innovations, which were unveiled at the Techconnect event at the prestigious Oriental Hotel in Lagos are Biometric Authentication Solution, Secure Transactions with Tokenization, Card Fusion, Quickteller for Business and Smart POS, noting that the services address digital payment fraud, problems with card issuance and portfolio management.
Speaking to journalists on the sideline of the Techconnect event, Akeem Lawal, the Managing Director, Payment Processing & Switching (Interswitch Purepay), disclosed that the Biometrics on Point of Sale (PoS) and Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) was designed in collaboration with SterlingPRO to protect customers against digital payment fraud and to avail them faster and more convenient ways to validate payments.
“The solution utilizes physiological features unique to everyone such as fingerprints, voice and facial features to verify payment transactions,” he said.
He added that Tokenization on the other hand replaces sensitive data such as the 16-digit account information with a unique digital identifier known as a token. “Tokenization will enable merchants to fast-track and collect payment seamlessly, enabling customers to check out faster in-store, in-app and online.
In addition, Card Fusion is a web-based instant card issuance platform that enables banks to conclude new card production requests and issue cards within a very short time, thus enhancing their customers’ experience while customers get to personalize their cards instantly,” he explained.
He assured that with the launch of these five offerings, customers can now carry out transactions faster and are assured of more secure payment platforms, while banks, merchants and business owners can fast-track and collect payments seamlessly.
Commenting on the essence of unveiling these products at the Techconnect event, Akeem Lawal stated that Interswitch will continue to build cutting-edge solutions to enhance business development and provide seamless payment solutions to customers across the African continent.
In his words: “Interswitch is redefining the payment landscape in Nigeria, therefore we are committed to enabling the payment ecosystem that will drive the growth of businesses for economic prosperity. We designed the Biometrics on POS & ATM to heighten customers’ protection from digital payment fraud. Although this solution exists in silos where account holders can verify their identity within their financial institution’s ecosystem, the Interswitch Biometrics on POS & ATM service will enable different banks’ customers to access their data and carry out payment transactions across various ATMs and PoS terminals.
“Our solutions have the capacity to be interoperable and scalable. With the Interswitch Biometric on PoS and ATM service, the Tokenization solution and Card Fusion services, payment service providers; acquirers, issuers and merchants can assure their customers of an added layer of security while carrying out a payment transaction.
“For the last 20 years, Interswitch has been at the forefront of developing innovative and cutting-edge solutions to accelerate the growth of businesses across the African continent. We are very confident that these new products will further transform the payment landscape.”
The launch event had in attendance tech and finance experts, regulators, and captains of industry amongst others.