Finextra is reporting that a French bank, "Banque Populaire," is issuing 400,000 personal card readers to secure online banking and e-commerce transactions.

In mid December, the Co-operative Financial Services decided to secure 300,000 online banking users with Xi-Sign 4000 Home Chip and PIN strong authentication card reader.

That's 700,000 personal card readers in a little over 30 days.   For HomeATM  this exciting new trend vindicates our decision to take a hardware approach to securing online transactions.

As we've been saying all along, a personal card reader is the best approach to securing transactions online.  So...what does this tell us?  It tells us that financial institutions are starting to agree with our methodology.

When  you combine this news with news of Barclays successful roll out of 1,000,000 plus PINsentry devices,  there's little doubt that HomeATM is "spot-on" with it's approach to bringing PIN Debit to the web, via it's personal SwipePIN device.  (pictured above left)

Oh, and did I happen to mention that a software application is 92 times "more likely" to induce fraudulent activity than a hardware device?   It's true...when you combine POS software with online shopping cart breaches, it's the basis for 92% of all breaches. 

Meanwhile, hardware devices fall into the realm of 1%, (See graph on right) and that's mostly due to tampering.  As I've stated before, I highly doubt that fraudsters will break into you home and tamper with your personal home swiping device, so the tampering factor is all but eliminated. 

Here's the story from Finextra:

Finextra: Banque Populaire to issue Xiring card readers to Internet banking customers

Banque Populaire in France is to equip 400,000 customers with Xiring's Xi-Sign card authentication reader for securing online banking and e-commerce.

The bank claims to be the first in France to embark on a large-scale roll-out of the system, which is currently deployed by more than 4 million UK users under the home Chip and PIN programme.

Customers will be equipped with a chip card reader - branded by Banque Populaire as a Vericode - which authenticates the card and generates an 8 digit one-time password on the LCD reader. The user then types in the displayed code on the bank Web form to confirm the transaction. 

The French bank says it will also use the card readers to verify cards for remote transactions, including Internet shopping.

P.S.  HomeATM's secure personal swiping device is EMV ready, can be emblazoned with a Financial Institution's logo, and exponentially raises the bar on e-commerce and online banking transactions.  Contact us for information on how we can help you further secure your customers online transactions.