First Data is forecasting 100,000 unit sales by year-end of its new card protection system FirstArmor, which begins shipping to merchants today. Developed in collaboration with RSA, the TransArmor service replaces consumer card data at the point-of-sale with a token number that preserves the value of card data for merchant business operations but removes all value for fraudsters, says First Data.

The vendor says merchants should be able to significantly reduce the scope, risk and costs associated with Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance without requiring new hardware or extensive changes to existing business processes.

The product comes with a 'limited warranty' against compromise of the token number in the event it is used to conduct a fraudulent transaction. The release of the product follows a pilot trial with 150 merchant locations that recorded latency averages of one tenth of a second per transaction, and ease of implementation with existing PoS terminals, says First Data.

Pilot user Anna Janise, manager of Breakers Motel, says: "Protecting our customers' payment card data is a priority for our business, but strong security can be a significant challenge to implement. Adding the TransArmor service to our existing point of sale required almost no effort on our part, and didn't impact our business operations."

 

 

 

 

 

 

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