Tag: mobile paymetns

The massive U.S. music festival will be able to complete transactions without the need for plastic cards.

The organizer of Lollapalooza 2014 has now announced that it will be issuing wristbands to its attendees that include wearable tech, so that they can use them throughout the event which runs from August 1 through August 3.

These plastic wristband wearables will each contain their own unique RFID chip.

Once the visitors to the festival have entered the grounds, the wearable tech will give them the ability to make mobile payments at various stalls and bars through the simple tapping of the device against a terminal. They must then enter a pin in order to confirm the payment, and this will eliminate the need for carrying cash or credit cards in order to buy items, food, and drinks.

The wearable tech will be set up for the attendees ahead of entering the Chicago Lollapalooza site.

Ahead of entering Grant Park, where the music festival is held, the participants in the event will be able to use the official website for the festival in order to be able to upload their credit card details. The wristbands will then be issued to the attendees in advance so that the attendees can link their own mobile payments details with their wearables.

On the day of the festival, participants wear the wristbands so that their entry to the event can be monitored and so that they can use the device in order to make the purchases they want, without having to carry cash on them and without having to take out their plastic credit cards every time they want to buy something.

C3, the company that is behind the organization of the Lollapalooza festival – as well as a number of other concerts and events – believes that it won’t be very long before using wearable tech will become the norm not only among the festivals that they organize, but among others, as well. The practicality, traceability, and convenience of the technology provides important benefits to organizers, sellers, and attendees in a highly cost effective and user friendly way.

Visual tool by Cronto to be used to help to protect consumers against Trojan malware infections.

Commerzbank has announced that it is using a new visual mobile security transaction signature tool from Cronto, a firm from the United Kingdom, in order to provide greater protection to its consumers banking online and through smartphones and tablets.

The protection is specifically geared toward preventing infections Trojan viruses.

The mobile security solution applies what is called CrontoSign technology, which is being implemented under the brand name photoTan. This will replace the current iTAN solution that is currently in place and which requires a unique number for the authorization of each transaction. By using photoTAN, instead, users are capable of performing verification of payments through the use of an app or a standalone gadget that uses a TAN authorization code to provide a digital signature for the transaction.

Commerzbank and Cronto have been working together for online and mobile security since 2008.

According to the Cronto chief executive, Igor Drokov, “We have worked closely with Commerzbank who helped to develop the CrontoSign visiual transaction signing technology from innovative ideas to the product ready to serve the needs of millions of banking customers.”

Last month, Juniper Research, the telecoms research firm, released a prediction that the adoption of smartphone banking services would break the one billion mark by 2017. That said, there were also a number of different hurdles to this uptake that were identified. Among them were concerns regarding mobile security following a number of reported events in terms of financial crimes that occurred involving consumers using smartphones and tablets.

This type of mobile security breach has created a lingering threat to the confidence consumers hold in the entire industry. For instance Check Point and Verisafe security venors reported the “Eurograbber” attack in November 2012 which utilized malware in order to break through PC and mobile security in order to target users and carry out transfers that were sent automatically and that ranged from €500 to €250,000.

That malware involved a Zeus Trojan bot attack called Zitmo, which infected smartphones and computers to compromise their mobile security, enabling hackers to receive and steal bank SMS messages to customers.

However, this new mobile security agreement between Commerzbank and Cronto is designed to overcome that type of attack so that it need not concern consumers who bank online.