2010-01-14

Asseco SEE Croatia Supports MasterCard

Asseco SEE Croatia (former Logos), a member of Asseco South Eastern Europe, extends support for MasterCard’s Chip Authentication Program to mobile phones.

Asseco SEE, Croatia (former Logos), a member of the Asseco South Eastern Europe group, has today announced the launch of its innovative ASEBA SxS product, which provides reliable, strong two-factor authentication via mobile phones for remote banking services and online transactions. Developed in co-operation with MasterCard, ASEBA SxS generates security tokens that comply with MasterCard’s proven CAP (Chip Authentication Program) and AA4C (Advanced Authentication for Chip) specifications and can also receive CAP tokens sent via SMS (Short Message System) text messages. Bank customers use the passcodes from CAP tokens to authenticate online, mobile and telephone based transactions and interactions.

Asseco SEE, Croatia and MasterCard have a long history of co-operating to deliver CAP based authentication solutions for the payments industry. Many banks have already benefited from this co-operation, either as direct customers of Asseco SEE Croatia or as users of MasterCard’s hosted SecureCode authentication service, which is powered by Asseco SEE Croatia SxS Server. The new ASEBA SxS product reflects the same high quality standards that MasterCard requires to deliver a highly reliable service to its customers.

CAP tokens can be generated on smartphones, iPhones and Java compatible phones. The SMS solution will work with any mobile (the CAP token being generated by the central server). ASEBA SxS supports several different authentication mechanisms: One Time Password; Challenge/Response; Message Authentication Code; Multiple Data Signature; and Transaction Data Signature. For the consumer, ASEBA SxS provides a user interface that is simple to use, ensuring a good experience that encourages its use.

By enabling CAP based authentication on any mobile phone, ASEBA SxS makes it viable for all banks to implement secure authentication for remote banking services and internet shopping payments quickly and economically. As bank customers can use their existing mobiles to authenticate their remote interactions and transactions, there is no need for banks to buy and distribute personal card readers for each customer. With near universal ownership of mobiles by bank customers engaging in internet, telephone and mobile banking and shopping, it is possible for a bank to protect the bulk of its customers’ remote business activity from online fraud (including phishing, pharming and man-in-the-middle attacks) very quickly.

Drazen Pehar, Asseco SEE Croatia CEO, emphasized: “We are pleased to be able to offer banks the ability to leverage MasterCard’s CAP on mobiles with our leading ASEBA SxS authentication solution, in addition to providing Personal Card Readers for CAP authentication of EMV cards. Banks now have the option to support mobile phones or card readers or both for CAP based authentication. Also, ASEBA SxS gives banks the choice of generating tokens either on the mobile phone itself - for smartphones, iPhones and Java based mobiles - or delivering tokens to the handset by SMS, as well as a range of authentication mechanisms”.

“Consumers’ justifiable concerns about the security of online and mobile transactions have encouraged interest in these remote services” commented Art Kranzley, chief emerging technology officer, Advanced Technology, MasterCard Worldwide. “Now that every mobile can have secure MasterCard authentication capabilities, banks are able to leverage this new powerful tool as a direct response to their own customers’ concerns to make online banking and e-commerce transactions even more secure. Investment in solutions from MasterCard partners like Asseco SEE, Croatia (former Logos) can give many more customers the confidence to conduct their business remotely. The potential growth in online and mobile services and the related migration from expensive branch based services makes a compelling business case for our customers”.