PBT Named Top 100 Private Company

Pay By Touch Added and Named to Annual AlwaysOn AO100 List

Company Joins Google and Salesforce.com With Recognition as a Leader in Innovation, Market Potential and Investor Value


SAN FRANCISCO, July 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Pay By Touch, the global leader of biometric authentication, personalized rewards and payment solutions, was recently named to the AlwaysOn AO100 List as one of the top privately-held companies.

The AO100 List recognizes the 100 most innovative and successful private firms in the United States based on market potential, customer adoption and investor value.

"The AO100 companies are driving the next wave of innovative technologies that are disrupting the old guard and shaping the new media landscape," said Tony Perkins, founder of AlwaysOn. "As ever, we were inundated with nominations from leading companies, and it's heartening to know that tomorrow's thought leaders and technology visionaries are already out there."

Awarded under the "Services & Enablers" category, Pay By Touch was selected among 1,000 peer nominations in the categories of investors, investment bankers and other industry experts.

John Rogers, Pay By Touch's founder, chairman and CEO, was selected by AlwaysOn to join other CEOs from emerging private companies to present their businesses to a panel of industry insiders and a standing-room-only audience at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit, July 25-27.

The summit was produced in partnership with the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP).

"It's a tremendous honor for Pay By Touch to join the ranks of Google and other groundbreakers who have previously won this award," said Rogers. "Pay By Touch is not only changing the way the world pays, we are ushering in a new era for biometrics that will change everything for consumers and businesses, from healthcare, to banking, to government."

Pay-By-Touch | Stanford Summit

Stanford Summit





John Rogers, CEO of Pay By Touch spoke about the company last week on Wednesday, July 28th, during the MIT/Standford Summit CEO Pitch.

He was invited to discuss the company when Pay By Touch was honored with the distinction of being named one of the Top 100 Private Companies in America; The list was based on market potential, customer adoption and investor value.

Click this link to hear what he had to say.

PBT Pilot Extended in UK

More Shoppers Get in Touch

Three more Co-ops are to be kitted out with equipment that will allow shoppers to pay using their index fingerprint after the supermarket chain decided to extend a trial of Pay by Touch technology. (Click Picture on Left to Enlarge)

The biometric payment system is already being trialled in three Co-ops around the Oxfordshire area by the Mid Counties Co-operative.

The pilot was initially slated to last 16 weeks but the society has decided to extend the timeframe for the first three stores and roll out the technology to an additional three stores to see what different demographics think of the technology.

It's been received well by elderly people - they like the idea of going out without having to carry a bag with a purse in it.

A Mid Counties Co-op spokesman told silicon.com the society has extended the trial to get a better insight into customer opinions. "We were very pleased with the trial but we decided we needed more knowledge under our belts," he said.

Registered shoppers have their fingerprint linked with credit card or debit card information and verify payment by pressing their digit against a reader. According to the Co-op, using Pay by Touch is 20 per cent quicker than using chip and PIN.

Recent research by the society found that of the 1,000 shoppers questioned, half had already signed up to the scheme or planned to do so soon. Co-op's spokesman said: "It's been received well by elderly people - they like the idea of going out without having to carry a bag with a purse in it."

The pioneering system of paying for shopping with the touch of a finger has scooped a major industry award for The Midcounties Co-operative. Pay By Touch, has won the ‘Most Effective Use of IT in Retail’ award at the Information Age Effective IT 2006 awards in London. Pay By Touch allows customers to pay by using their finger and a memorable number, so no cash or cards are required.

The Effective IT awards celebrate the best of UK IT, with winners selected for their outstanding application of information technology in the creation of business value.

An independent judging panel, made up of some of the IT industry’s most senior executives, chose the winners from a record number of entries. Awards were presented at Room by the River in London.

Ben Reid, chief executive of The Midcounties Co-operative, said: “Pay By Touch has been a superb innovation for the business and our customers, and we are delighted to have picked up such a prestigious award for its successful introduction.

“It is a quick and secure method of payment for customers, as well as enhancing our reputation as one of the most innovative retailers in the UK. “The initial planning was started by Oxford

The Co-op has not given figures for how long the next phase of the trial will last or how many people have signed up for the program.

The spokesman said: "We've had good feedback and good sign-up. We're happy with the way it's going." The three stores will be situated in the Forest of Dean, Highworth and Swindon.

Entrepreneur Article on New Payments

Cash and checks are starting to look like ghosts of payments past. Credit and debit cards are the popular ways to pay right now, but some new technologies are showing up to the party, both offline and online.

In one of the "more interesting" developments, Pay By Touch has had success in rolling out a biometric system that lets customers pay with a swipe of their finger.

And PayPal recently introduced PayPal Mobile, which lets users send and receive money via cell phone text messaging and is already being used by MTV, the NBA Store and other for-profit and nonprofit companies.

Contactless payments are also slowly rolling out across the nation. These let customers charge items to their accounts by simply waving a card or device near a reader. It's a technology well-suited to purchases that are quick and simple, such as gas, convenience store merchandise or vending machine items. Getting started with contactless payments is rather simple for businesses. "The contactless infrastructure is built on the existing payment network. It's a fairly straightforward process to enhance a terminal to accept a contactless payment as well as a mag stripe payment," says Niki Manby, vice president of market and technology innovation at Visa USA. Still, expect rollout among merchants to be gradual.

Some new online payment technologies are focusing on security issues. For example, Pay By Touch Online utilizes technology to biometrically authenticate you and then allows consumers to use PIN Debit on the Internet for the first time.

See: Pay By Touch announces first ever PIN debit option for online purchases

If you're considering adopting a new payment technology, first take stock of your business needs. Says Manby, "It's not technology for the sake of something new-it's technology to try to solve a problem or improve on a scenario, like getting lines to go faster." These new innovations promise to bring added convenience and security for both merchants and consumers alike.

Biometrics Holds Key to Your Security

Digital fingerprint technology holds key to your security and convenience

Pay for the groceries, lock the house, start the car, check in at a doctor's office or log on to a laptop. There's so much the swipe of a fingertip can do.

An evolving digital tool, biometric-fingerprint technology holds the promise of replacing or lessening reliance on everyday necessities such as credit cards, key chains and passwords. It even helps registered travelers get through security at Orlando International Airport.

An evangelist of biometrics, Scott Moody is CEO of AuthenTec, a Melbourne company that produces sensors that can read a fingerprint."Looking ahead, I think the use of this technology could become ubiquitous," he said, gazing out the window of his office overlooking the Indian River. "It would just be taken for granted as part of the everyday world."Moody's 8-year-old firm, which employs 89, has grown rapidly, thanks to four infusions of venture capital totaling $63.5 million, with shipments increasing in the past three years from 1.5 million to a projected 7 million to 8 million units in 2006. AuthenTec is among several global suppliers for a market comprising computers, cell phones, home security, autos and building-access controls, presenting a target of about 1 billion sales worth $5 billion to $10 billion this year, Moody said.

Biometric-fingerprint readers are housed in a bit of silicon not much bigger than a fingernail clipping yet powerful enough to capture a fingerprint image that, when magnified, looks like closely packed mountains and valleys in a desert landscape. The silicon slivers are seen as a tool for safeguarding sensitive personal and financial data stored on laptops used by the military, banks, businesses and medical firms. Many business-model laptops now have the biometric devices, said Ray Sawall, Gateway senior manager for professional-notebook management.

Beyond security, convenience could be a major driver for wider adoption in the consumer world, said Forrester Research analyst Jonathan Penn, who sees biometric devices as a tool for making purchases at the supermarket and other stores."I can get through the checkout line faster, and I don't have to carry cash or a debit or credit card," he said.

A fingerprint-scanning device linked to bank or credit-card accounts, developed by Pay By Touch of San Francisco, is in use at about 2,500 sites across the country, including Coast to Coast, a Tampa convenience store.

Future uses include the ability to pay at the pump for gas and register for a visit at a doctor's office with a finger swipe, said John Morris, Pay By Touch president.

Individuals seeking to cash payroll or government checks can use a similar biometric tool, called Paycheck Secure, also developed and powered by Pay By Touch technology, at Zions Bank of Utah. "It's convenient for customers, and it keeps us from being defrauded," said David Fuhriman, senior vice president of retail-product management.

Still another version of the technology is a key-chain fob, called plusID, developed by Privaris Inc., a privately held firm in Charlottesville, Va. The 1-inch-long device, which uses an AuthenTec sensor, is a security tool to unlock doors and log on to computers at businesses, Privaris President and CEO Barry Johnson said. It could also be used to lock and unlock home and car doors, he said. But before biometric technology replaces credit cards and makes the key ring obsolete, barriers remain, industry analysts and experts said.

The $5 sensors are still too pricey for mass adoption; there is little awareness of and even less demand for them; and some concerns linger about how secure they really are, experts said. "There's value in it for locking a phone or navigating games," said Chris Bierbaum, Sprint Nextel Innovation Manager."But the price has to come down for a cell-phone carrier to deploy it. And I want to see more testing on security. I need to see confirmation from a gazillion tests."

More optimistic is Joel Fishbein, analyst for Philadelphia-based investment firm Janney Montgomery Scott. "We aren't there yet culturally and aren't willing to give up things we know, but I think we will see early adoption in the next 18 months," he said.

In a business sense, adoption could be hastened by the profit motive, because with Pay By Touch, retailers would pay a lower fee for biometric-based transactions than credit cards, he said. Another proponent is Walter Hamilton, chairman of the International Biometric Industry Association, a nonprofit trade group."I don't have to carry cash, check, credit card or debit card," he said. "I can't leave home without my finger."

POS Pointers

POS Pointers

Opinion: An initiative involving Microsoft and startup IP Commerce could change the landscape in the point-of-sale world.

For 20 years or more, one of the most profitable segments of the channel has been point-of-sale systems sold and configured by solution providers. But as time marches on, there appears to be some significant changes underway in the technology landscape that could significantly alter the traditional POS business model.

Microsoft, in conjunction with a startup company called IP Commerce, is working with a variety of electronic funds transfer services to create a SAAS (software as a service) delivery model for POS.

In this model, retailers would deploy IP Commerce's POS software as a service running on top of Vista. That service would then be connected to a variety of back-end electronic funds transfer agents, which today include BankServ, Chase Paymentech Solutions, CIT Group, Internet Commerce, PayPal and Pay by Touch.

These organizations have bandied together to create a PASS (Payments as a Secure Service) offering that seeks to eliminate the need to create and deploy dedicated POS systems. Instead, any PC running Vista will be able to invoke PASS to securely transfer funds from any retail location by leveraging new sets of security protocols that are layered into the Vista operating system.

The advent of this service poses both a threat and an opportunity for solution providers. The obvious threat is that it has the potential to eliminate the need for specialized POS systems and the solution providers that build them. The opportunity is that it may open the whole POS ecosystem to a broader number of solution providers because they won't have to invest as much capital in setting up a POS system.

Not only does the IP Commerce system manage the transfer of funds, it also provides an accounts payable and receivable management system for the individual retailer as a service. And down the road you can envision how the service might be used to give retailers more visibility into the back-end supply chains of manufacturers.

Given the fact that PASS is dependent on Vista adoption, it will probably be a while before IP Commerce becomes the equivalent of a Salesforce.com in the POS space. But at the same time, the presence of a PASS consortium made up of financial services companies that will be pushing retailers to adopt IP Commerce because it lowers their costs by streamlining their back-end processes makes PASS an impending threat to every solution provider and distributor in the POS space.

And as the saying goes, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. In this case, that will probably result in a pressing need for existing POS providers to start moving upstream to higher-level consulting and management services before what they do today becomes a low-margin service tomorrow.

A Touch of Money

A Touch of Money By: Anil K. Jain and Sharathchandra Pankanti

Biometric authentication systems for credit cards could put identity thieves out of business

He stole the identities of the world’s rich and famous—Paul Allen, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Warren Buffett, and Larry Ellison, to name a few. Until the New York City police busted 32-year-old Abraham Abdallah, it seemed that a diabolically gifted hacker, not a busboy at a Brooklyn restaurant, had masterminded this multimillion-dollar caper.

However, a tattered copy of a Forbes magazine featuring America’s 400 richest people found in Abdallah’s possession—along with 800 credit cards—exposed the thief’s simple modus operandi.

Here were his targets, listed in order of their net worth, some with Social Security numbers and credit card information scrawled right next to their names. Investigators soon discovered that Abdallah had obtained most of this information from the Internet, as well as from credit bureaus Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, by sending queries on the forged letterhead of several top investment banks.

With birth dates, addresses, and Social Security and credit card numbers in hand, Abdallah would use a computer at a public library to order merchandise online, withdraw money from brokerage accounts, and apply for credit cards in other people’s names. Things started to unravel when he tried to transfer US $10 million from the Merrill Lynch account of software entrepreneur Thomas Siebel. Someone at Merrill Lynch noticed that the same two Yahoo e-mail addresses, both Abdallah’s, had been used in connection with five other clients. Soon after, on 19 March 2001, two New York City detectives wrestled Abdallah out of his car, ending one of the most sensational identity theft sprees in history.

Catching ID thieves is like spearfishing during a salmon run: skewering one big fish barely registers when the vast majority just keep on going. According to data from the Aberdeen Group, Boston, the cumulative losses suffered by tens of millions of individuals and businesses worldwide registered at an estimated $221 billion in 2003. Aberdeen, which assumed an enormous 300 percent compound annual growth rate, projected that losses would rise to an almost unfathomable $2 trillion in 2005. More recent numbers from Javelin Strategy and Research, based in Pleasanton, Calif., indicate a much lower growth rate, at least in the United States, where total losses rose from about $48 billion in 2003 to $56.6 billion in 2005.

Clearly, it is far too easy to steal personal information these days—especially credit card numbers, which are involved in more than 67 percent of identity thefts, according to a U.S. Federal Trade Commission study. It’s also relatively easy to fake someone’s signature or guess a password; thieves can often just look at the back of an ATM card, where some 30 percent of people actually write down their personal identification number (PIN) and give the thief all that’s needed to raid the account. But what if we all had to present our fingers or eyes to a scanner built into our credit cards to authenticate our identities before completing a transaction? Faking fingerprints or iris scans would prove challenging to even the most technologically sophisticated identity thief.

The sensors, processors, and software needed to make secure credit cards that authenticate users on the basis of their physical, or biometric, attributes are already on the market. But so far, the credit card industry hasn’t seen fit to integrate even basic fingerprint-sensing technology with their enormous IT systems. Concerned about biometric system performance, customer acceptance, and the cost of making changes to their existing infrastructure, the credit card issuers apparently would rather go on eating an expense equal to 0.25 percent of Internet transaction revenues and the 0.08 percent of off-line revenues that now come from stolen credit card numbers.
Indeed, only a few companies worldwide have even experimented with biometric credit cards. The best known is the Bank of Tokyo–Mitsubishi. Since 2004, it has issued Visa cards embedded with chips that identify a customer according to vein patterns in the palm. All of the bank’s ATMs have palm scanners that match the imaged vein patterns to a digitized copy of the customer’s vein patterns—called a biometric template—that is stored in the card. But because merchants lack the requisite palm scanners to go with this technology, customers still sign receipts or enter PINs when making purchases with the card.

All biometric systems recognize patterns, such as the veins in your palms, the texture of your iris, or the minutiae of your fingerprints. As researchers who have investigated and engineered numerous biometric devices, we want to propose the broad outlines of a new authentication system for credit cards, based on biometric sensors that could dramatically curtail identity theft. Our proposed system uses fingerprint sensors, though other biometric technologies, either alone or in combination, could be incorporated. The system could be economical, protect privacy, and guarantee the validity of all kinds of credit card transactions, including ones that take place at a store, over the telephone, or with an Internet-based retailer. By preventing identity thieves from entering the transaction loop, credit card companies could quickly recoup their infrastructure investments and save businesses, consumers, and themselves billions of dollars every year.

If credit card issuers don’t act soon, customers, many of whom are becoming increasingly comfortable with biometric technologies, might just force the issue.

In the United States, millions of people at hundreds of supermarkets have already given the thumbs-up to services offered by BioPay LLC, Herndon, Va., and Pay By Touch, San Francisco, which let shoppers pay for their groceries by pressing a finger on a sensor mounted near the cash register—no card necessary.

Millions more, mostly in Asia, have fingerprint sensors built into their cellphones to act as locks and into their laptops to replace text-based log-ins. All of this activity translates to 29 percent annual growth for a worldwide biometrics market that’s expected to reach $3.4 billion in 2007, according to Research and Consultancy Outsourcing Services, a market research organization based in New Delhi, India. Finger-scanning technology made by companies like Atmel, AuthenTec, Digital Persona, Fujitsu, and Identix will account for almost 60 percent of the total market, the organization estimates. And that market will greatly expand if and when credit card companies get serious about combating ID theft [see photos, “Scanners Galore”].

Current credit card authentication systems validate anyone—including impostors—who can reproduce the exclusive possessions or knowledge of legitimate cardholders. Presenting a physical card at a cash register proves only that you have a credit card in your possession, not that you are who the card says you are. Similarly, passwords or PINs do not authenticate your identity but rather your knowledge. Most passwords or PINs can be guessed with just a little information: an address, license plate number, birth date, or pet’s name. Patient thieves can and do take pieces of information gleaned from the Internet or from mail found in the trash and eventually associate enough bits to bring a victim to financial grief.

Besides trawling the Internet and diving into dumpsters for personal data, thieves exploit people through various cons known collectively as social engineering. A smooth-talking grifter can sometimes get a customer service representative to part with a PIN or reveal other things about an account, such as a mailing address or a phone number. The bank makes it easier for thieves if its authentication protocol is riddled with exceptions. For instance, if you don’t know the PIN, you might be able to provide a mailing address, mother’s maiden name, phone number, or Social Security number to get access to—or at least information about—a particular account. Sometimes those bits of data can be harvested from other sources.

Furthermore, customer service representatives and their managers can usually override authentication procedures when they deem it necessary. A caffeine-addled agent working a double shift may be only too eager to use her override privileges to let you—or your would-be doppelgänger—make a purchase.

To ensure truly secure credit card transactions, we need to minimize this kind of human intervention in the authentication process. Such a major transition will come at a cost that credit card companies have so far declined to pay. They are particularly worried about the cost of transmitting and receiving biometric information between point-of-sale terminals and the credit card payment system. They also fret that some customers, anxious about having their biometric information floating around cyberspace, might not adopt the cards. To address these concerns, we offer an outline for a self-contained smart-card system that we believe could be implemented within the next few years.

Here’s how it would work. When activating your new card, you would load an image of your fingerprint onto the card. To do this, you would press your finger against a sensor in the card—a silicon chip containing an array of microcapacitor plates. (In large quantities, these fingerprint-sensing chips cost only about $5 each.) The surface of the skin serves as a second layer of plates for each microcapacitor, and the air gap acts as the dielectric medium. A small electrical charge is created between the finger surface and the capacitor plates in the chip. The magnitude of the charge depends on the distance between the skin surface and the plates. Because the ridges in the fingerprint pattern are closer to the silicon chip than the valleys, ridges and valleys result in different capacitance values across the matrix of plates. The capacitance values of different plates are measured and converted into pixel intensities to form a digital image of the fingerprint [see diagram, “Fingerprint Matching”].

More on PASS for Windows Vista

Boston—Software as a service has taken on a new meaning for small business owners that touch, in any way, the payments industry.

Thanks to the combined forces of a software infrastructure from IP Commerce, the IP Payments Framework, and a consortium of payment processors, data aggregators and small business lenders—including the likes of Pay By Touch, Chase Bank of JP Morgan Chase & Co., PayPal and CIT Group—small businesses will be able to complete financial transactions from their desktops, as a service.

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference here, IP Commerce, in conjunction with Microsoft, announced July 12 its PASS (Payments as a Secure Service) capability, which will be available to small businesses through the next version of Windows Vista.

IP Commerce, based in Denver, is focused on delivering payments as a service to any application. Its software currently lives in two places: in browsers (in an online store's shopping cart, for example,) and in hardware at the point of sale.

At the same time, IP Commerce's payments platform is hosted by banks and other payment service providers, and by transaction network service providers for payments that handle about 12 billion transactions a year, according to Chip Kahn, founder and CEO of IP Commerce.

"We spent a lot of time creating a meta model to enable a single payment service class—for credit cards, business-to-consumer and business-to-business payment capabilities—made available through an SOA [service-oriented architecture]," Kahn said.

"Where we're focused now is in creating a critical mass around this service and providing more capabilities for the end user to access on-demand payment services, and access any payment service they'd like right off Vista," he said.

The way small businesses currently interface with credit card and financial services companies is through one-to-one integrations—either large-scale or through some sort of file transfer facilitated by EDI (electronic data interchange).

The goal of PASS is to allow ISVs, system integrators and VARS to create their own SOA-based financial management applications using the PASS infrastructure.

At the end of the day, the idea is to enable, for example, a supplier to get a purchase order invoice through to Wal-Mart and accept payment without having to do a proprietary integration, Kahn said.

Through the PASS Consortium, small businesses will be able to receive payments, process transactions, pay invoices and get other financial services—a goal that requires buy-in from a good portion of the companies that actually facilitate electronic payments, hence the Consortium.

PASS members read like a list of Who's Who in the financial services industry, including BankServ, which provides payment services—Fedwire, SWIFT and TurboSWIFT, ACH and Check 21—to banks, governments and businesses; Chase Paymentech, one of the country's largest financial transaction processors for businesses; CIT Group, a commercial and consumer finance company and major Small Business Administration lender; PayPal, which has an online payments system; and Pay by Touch Payment Solutions, a global leader in biometric authentication and payments software provider.

"Data aggregators have to be part of the Consortium," Kahn said. "We have eight principal members, including the largest EDI VAN [value-added network], the largest bank and the largest biometrics provider. It really plays through the whole day in the life for a small business, and it's an open platform."

Another part of the goal is to provide payments to small businesses where they live—their PCs. But the consortium's work comes with a caveat related to the Windows Vista release. Expected early in 2007, Vista is probably one of the most delayed releases in Microsoft's history. It has been scheduled and rescheduled for public availability, with one issue after another delaying its official launch.

Kahn said he doesn't see this as a problem for PASS. "We've been working with Vista since January," he said. "Beta 2 has been complete. Certainly for anybody who is looking to build solutions against Vista, if they think they can wait they're making a mistake. It's pretty close. We don't believe there's going to be much, if any, delay past January."

Business users will need to have an investment in Microsoft to utilize the PASS system; at minimum they need to upgrade to Vista and to have QuickBooks or Microsoft Dynamics implemented (the latter being a much more significant undertaking).

"That's where we see the whole role of SIs and their value-add," Kahn said, adding that Microsoft is tapping the 7,000 partners in attendance at the Worldwide Partner Council to expand the PASS framework.

The PASS services are expected to be fully implemented by the time Vista launches early in 2007

PBT Makes PASS with Microsoft

Partners Will Promote the Delivery of Payments as a Secure Service (PASS) to Small Businesses Through Microsoft Windows Vista. PASS is a consortium of leading financial institutions and payment service providers. including BankServ, Pay By Touch, PayPal, Chase Paymentech and CIT Group.

Click picture to read

The consortium promotes the delivery of a wide range of innovative financial management solutions to small businesses through Microsoft Windows Vista, with technology enabled by IP Commerce.

With PASS, Every Business is a Merchant. The goal of PASS is to allow businesses using Microsoft Windows Vista to make and receive payments over the Internet, creating new revenue models and payment abilities that can turn every business into a merchant.

Today, only 25% of small businesses have the ability to easily process electronic payments.

PASS represents a vision to payment-enable the other 75%, and extend to all small businesses an entirely new level of financial management capabilities including the ability to receive payments, pay invoices, obtain financial services securely, and better manage cash flow. PASS, together with Microsoft VISTA, provides the following benefits:

Clear access to data and reporting
Confidence to transact securely
Connections between small businesses and their financial management service providers

Why Windows Vista?

Windows Vista is a game changer, more so than any prior Windows version. The following technological advances available in Vista represent real business opportunities through PASS.

Security

Increase security and reduce liability with Windows Vista and PASS. Windows Vista's robust user and machine level security enhancements help Merchants easily, confidently and cost-effectively embrace security best practices. User Access Control provides control over access to specific applications and functionality, giving you and your customers confidence that financial actions and data are available only to the right entities. Your customers will also rest assured knowing that the new BitLocker technology securely encrypts their financial information. The Secure Payments SDK for Windows Vista makes it easier for ISVs to consume and leverage these capabilities and provides a level of security unavailable prior to Windows Vista.

Small Business/Merchant - Why PASS?

Control Cash Flow

Cash flow is the most critical aspect of a small business. Without the right balance of money coming in to money going out, businesses fail. Through PASS and Windows Vista, small businesses can drastically simplify their financial management and take control of their cash flow. Payment services can be directly integrated into your accounting application, you can easily offer your customers more ways to pay, and you can ensure that all of your financial activities are happening in a secure environment.

Enhanced Financial Management Options

PASS Members represent a broad range of financial management services to suit all of a small businesses needs. The following best-in-class providers all offer unique solutions that run securely on a Windows Vista computer.

Chase Paymentech's world class services are available from a virtual terminal right on the Vista desktop, allowing Accounts Receivable personnel to accept and process credit cards over the phone or in person.

PayPal's electronic invoicing and secure payment services are available within the PASS offering, along with recurring payments, pre-authorization and batch processing. In a Business-to-Business scenario, this means that settlement can be performed after a product is shipped.

Using CIT Group's PASS solution, businesses can finance their upgrades to Windows Vista and Office 2007. They can also perform cash management activities, such as factor invoices (AR), finance purchases (AP), and even access micro loans for working capital, all from within Windows Vista.

Pay By Touch combines a leading edge, security-focused payment method (biometrics) with more traditional forms of payment, to provide a wide range of payment options for Small Office/Home Office, Small-to-Medium size Business and Enterprise level merchants. Pay By Touch enables businesses to move from more expensive forms of payment (credit cards) to less expensive forms of payment (such as ACH check processing, eCheck, and PIN Debit).

BankServ’s DepositNow service allows merchants to scan paper checks and deposit them remotely, reducing risk and improving Accounts Receivable performance.

Every day, thousands of businesses will use ICC Net services offered through PASS to manage mission critical business documents within familiar software applications. This will facilitate the movement of billions of dollars of goods and services, all using the security and rich user experience capabilities of Windows Vista

AlwaysOn Unveils the AO100 Winners

Pay by Touch Named Top 100 Private Company by AlwaysOn Network

Today, Pay By Touch was honored by the Always On Network and named as one of the Top 100 Private Company's in 2006. This marks a significant milestone for Pay By Touch as they become a Top 100 company for the first time. Click here for last years winners.

The AO100 honors the best in innovation and showcases which top private companies demonstrating market traction and the ability to disrupt existing markets.

The AlwaysOn editorial panel selected the hundred most innovative and successful private firms from more than 1,000 companies nominated by venture investors, investment bankers, leading entrepreneurs and industry insiders.

Each of the AO100 winners demonstrated excellence in five criteria: innovation, market potential, customer adoption, media buzz, and investor value creation.

The list consists solely of private companies at all phases of develop-ment from startup to late stage. “The AO100 Top Private Companies represent the tech sector’s most innovative, disruptive, and exciting firms,” said AlwaysOn editor Tony Perkins.
“They all share strong performance track rec-ords, robust business models, leading technology, rapid customer adoption and most importantly, significant market potential. These are the companies to watch.”

The fourth-annual elite AO100 list was compiled by the AlwaysOn editorial panel. In order to make the AO100 list, companies had to be peer-nominated, with AlwaysOn receiving more than 1,000 nominations from venture investors, investment bankers and other industry experts.

“Once again, we received more than 1,000 high-quality nominations for this year’s AO100 list, so there’s clearly still a healthy market for innovation in the high-tech sector,” said Tony Perkins, founder of AlwaysOn. “All of this year’s winners are demonstrating significant market traction and are pursuing game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players.

The huge success of last year’s winner, Skype, is proof that innovation can appeal to the mass market, and we hope that many of this year’s winners will go on to achieve similar success.”

The AO100 companies will be honored at a reception during the upcoming AlwaysOn Stanford Summit to be held July 25-27 at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center on the Stanford University Campus, being produced in partnership with the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP).

For the complete list click here

Visa, Pay By Touch & Moneris, Compete for New Talent

Visa, Pay By Touch, Moneris, Compete for New Talent at the First Annual Bankcard Career and Job Fair

Pay By Touch Payment Solutions is a leading provider of payment processing services focused exclusively on meeting the needs of today’s merchants. Our end-to-end solutions extend your product suite with a vast range of payment processing and biometric payment solutions. In addition to supporting a large variety of traditional point-of-sale processing products, Pay By Touch Payment Solutions offers proprietary gateway and ACH services for a robust card-not-present alternative. Our biometric solution is today's leading-edge payments technology, offering your customers best-in-class solutions to reduce costs, increase loyalty, and enhance profitability. Pay By Touch is dedicated to always offering you a robust suite of products, ensuring that you have the right solution to offer to your merchants and grow your business. Put Pay By Touch Payment Solutions to work for you! For more information call 1-800-333-8928 or email paymentsolutionsales@paybytouch.com.

KUTV Salt Lake City on PBT

kutv.com - Zions Customers Can Cash Checks With A Finger Scan

SALT LAKE CITY Zions First National Bank is rolling out finger scanners for check-cashing security and other banking transactions. Zions Bank set up scanners at a dozen branch offices in Utah and Idaho where customers can volunteer to enroll in the program, identifying themselves by geometric patterns on an index finger.

Non-customers also can sign up to cash a payroll or government check for a 1.5 percent fee. People like the convenience and security, said LeeAnne Linderman, Zions’ executive vice president and director of branch banking. Zions hopes the system, which went up without fanfare a week ago, will cut down on fraudulent check-cashing, and it plans to roll it out at other branches after a series of monthly reviews.

“The more consumers feel comfortable with biometrics, the more you’ll see it in various applications,” said John Hall, a spokesman for the 8,000-member American Bankers Association. “Customers always want their transactions to go through quickly, and perhaps this will allow for that and more security.” Hall, other banks and a banking analyst weren’t aware of any other bank using fingerprint biometrics for regular transactions, and San Francisco-based Pay By Touch said Zions was the first bank using its system.

About 350 banks in North America, including Zions, are using hand geometry systems to clear customers into safe-deposit vaults. Some foreign banks operate ATMs that use finger, iris or hand-palm scans. Finger scanners are being used at checkout stands of some major grocery chains so customers can pay for items with just a touch of a finger, said Gary Bradt, a vice president for Silex Technology America Inc., which makes the devices mostly for computer and laptop security.

You don’t have to give up you actual fingerprints for these systems, which record a geometric pattern or a few characteristics of index fingers. When Zions customers show up at a teller’s booth, they just press an index finger onto a reader, which brings up account information on the teller’s computer screen. Zions also is beefing up security for online transactions, said Preston Wood, senior vice president for information security for Zions Bancorporation. Customers can arrange to see a unique image or picture when they log into Zions’ Web site to make sure they aren’t calling up an impostor site designed by identity thieves. The new security will monitor customers’ banking transactions and computer preferences to look for any aberration that could indicate fraud, said Amir Orad, a marketing vice president for RSA Security of Bedford, Mass., which developed the behind-the-curtain changes for Zions.

Zions operates more than 450 branch offices in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Texas and Washington. It introduced the finger scanners at branch offices in Salt Lake City and other Utah locations in Park City, Price, Provo, Midvale, Ogden and West Valley City. The Zions Express system also is being used at Idaho branches in Caldwell and Burley.

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Fingerprints Becoming ID at Zions Bank

Transcript:

Zions Bank has just launched a hi-tech check cashing program that no other bank in the nation is doing. Instead of having to show your ID to cash a check, all you need is a fingerprint.

Zions Bank has just launched a pilot project at 12 branches in Utah and Idaho. When customers come in to cash payroll or government checks, their ID's will be confirmed through "Biometric" technology--that is, from your fingerprint.

James Boden, "Pay by Touch" Reg. Sales Mgr.: "What the biometric is doing is reading individual data points on your fingerprint. Because of the security involved, we capture the image of the fingerprint and store it in a file."

It takes only a few minutes to enroll in the system. First your drivers license or legal ID is scanned in, employment is verified and your photo is taken. Then both index fingers are scanned.

Stephen Richards, Zions Bank: "After that [the first set up] you're good to go forever. You don't even have to bring in your ID after that." Just come in, place your finger on the reader and all your ID info will be displayed on the teller's computer screen in seconds.

Rob Brough, Senior VP, Zions Bank: "The possibilities are really endless. But for now, we're looking at it as a check cashing system. Could it be used for other types of identification, ATM's, etc? Absolutely."

Zion's Bank is the first major financial institution to use biometrics for personal identification purposes. Across the country, there are about 2,000 grocery and convenience stores using it, with 3-million individuals in the system.

Rob Brough: "We'll take a look at it in the next six months and see how it works. And based on the success of the program, we'll look to expand it beyond the initial 12."

The other benefit of this system is that if someone has tried to cash a fraudulent check at another participating bank, the teller will immediately know.

Best Offense is Biometric Defense

In the era of underage alcohol and obacco use, retailers are often accused of lenient age enforcement and sales policies. Storeowners and employees can no longer rely on appearances to identify age, but must instead put their faith in a small piece of plastic with a picture, birth date, and address. But even the most vigilant retailers fall victim to counterfeit IDs, employee errors, undercover “sting” operations, and periods of customer overcrowding.

As detailed in the August 2005 issue of the Beverage Journal, biometric technology has proved a viable solution to age identification problems in Colorado liquor stores. What the August issue didn’t tell you is that biometrics has a place in Maryland and Washington D.C. for age identification, as well as for another cause for concern: cashing customer paychecks.

Biometrics & Age Identification

To best understand how biometrics relates to the beverage industry, let’s review some of the topics covered in August’s article: Biometrics: A High-Tech Answer to the Old Question; ‘Does He Look 21?’

When Bob Zenner’s liquor store, Terry’s Liquor, mistakenly sold alcohol to an undercover sting operative, the three-day shut-down penalty cost the store $35,000 in sales.

To safeguard against future infractions, Zenner enlisted the help of the Pay By Touch, a biometric fingerprint identification system. Pay By Touch helped Zenner and other liquor stores in Colorado install a system that identifies a person by their fingerprints.

To read the entire article (Adobe PDF Format) click here

PBT Introduces Paycheck Secure 8.0

Pay By Touch Introduces 'One-Button' Electronic Deposits for Retailers Offering Check Cashing

Paycheck Secure Powered by Pay By Touch Now Features 'Check 21'

Last Update: 8:02 AM ET Jul 10, 2006 - CBS MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO, July 10, 2006 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Pay By Touch, the global leader of biometric authentication, personalized rewards, and payment solutions, today announced the launch of Paycheck Secure 8.0, an upgrade from the previous version of Paycheck Secure, that allows retailers to electronically deposit all checks at once with the simple touch of a button.

To date, more than $8 billion in checks have been cashed using Paycheck Secure powered by Pay By Touch.

Paycheck Secure 8.0 enhances existing technology that enables fingerprint authorization for customers cashing government or payroll checks. Benefits of the new version include significant time savings, more secure transactions and faster access to funds.

"Paycheck Secure is a win-win for consumers and retailers," said John Rogers, founder, chairman and CEO of Pay By Touch. "Paycheck Secure retailers are improving their bottom lines and becoming more competitive through quicker check cashing and a streamlined business process."
Convenient and Secure

Paycheck Secure 8.0's Check 21 feature allows the deposit of checks using electronic images rather than paper checks. This means that busy retailers no longer need to make trips to the bank to make deposits. The new feature may also improve retailers' cash flow with more frequent deposits.

The competitive advantage for retailers is in the ability to accept third-party checks for deposit, reduced risk, simplified historical record keeping and streamlined store management procedures.

How It Works

Signing up to use Paycheck Secure is simple and takes about a minute. Customers simply provide a photo ID, two finger scans, and a digital photo which is taken right in the store. Once enrolled, customers can quickly and securely cash payroll checks with a quick and simple finger scan. No IDs are necessary, and risk to the retailer is dramatically reduced.

After a store has completed their check cashing activities for the day, the Manager can deposit a batch of checks to the bank account electronically with just the touch of a button.
"As a person without a bank account, cashing my paycheck has become much easier using Pay By Touch's Paycheck Secure," said California resident Isidro Vega. "I just walk in, put my finger down, and the clerk instantly 'knows' me."

Assists in Compliance with Federal Government Regulations

Paycheck Secure 8.0 makes it easy for retailers to comply with federal check cashing-related laws by automating some of the reporting required from any check cashing business.

"Banks are concerned that money service businesses are not complying with all the government regulations," said Jeffrey Louie, owner and operator of the ABC Check Cashing Company in Sacramento, Calif. "Our banker loves the Paycheck Secure system because it streamlines record keeping and automatically enables compliance."

For additional information about the Paycheck Secure product, visit
http://www.paychecksecure.com/.

Overview

Paycheck Secure is a complete payroll check cashing solution. Our system stops fraud and speeds check cashing by using the latest fingerprint scanning technology and the nation's largest commercial biometric database.


The previous version of Paycheck Secure was named the BiometriTech Product of the Year in 2003

How the System Works

Your customer completes a one-time one-minute enrollment at any Paycheck Secure location. The customer's driver's license information and fingerprints are recorded in the system, along with a digital photo of the customer.

When the customer returns to your store to cash a check, all they need to do is put their finger on the scanner, and the fingerprint scanner verifies your customer's identity. The customer's complete check cashing history appears on the screen, and Paycheck Secure will make a clear recommendation about whether you should accept or reject the customer's check.



Enrolling in Paycheck Secure

The enrollment process is quick and easy for both you and your customers. In about one minute, the customer can be ready to cash checks in your store or any store in your chain.

1. Customer hands clerk a photo ID. The clerk scans the front and back of the customer's ID, and the information will be entered automatically in the Paycheck Secure system. No data entry required!

2. Take the customer's picture. Using the included PC camera, the clerk takes a digital photo of the customer to be added to the database. The customer's picture will appear on the screen every time they cash a check, so you can easily verify their identity.

3. Customer scans finger. The customer's fingerprints are entered into the Paycheck Secure system. Using fingerprints is much safer than using passwords or PINs, because fingerprints cannot be lost, stolen or duplicated.

That's it! The customer is now ready to securely cash checks in your store. If you're using multi-store enrollment, the customer's information can be ready to access in every store in your chain within minutes.

Cashing Checks with Paycheck Secure

Cashing checks is a breeze for you and your customers. With Paycheck Secure, you'll be cashing more checks than ever before, with more security. The entire process takes as little as 15 seconds.

1. Customer scans a finger and their record appears. The customer places either index finger on the biometric finger scanner. Within seconds, you'll see the customer's picture, drivers license, and check cashing history on the screen.

2. Run customer's check through the scanner. The bank account and routing information will automatically be entered into the system. (Don't worry, Paycheck Secure can detect most kinds of fake checks and alert you before any money changes hands.)

3. Enter check number and date. You can tell Paycheck Secure to automatically reject checks that fall outside the dollar amounts or date limits you set. Paycheck Secure will automatically calculate the check cashing fee for you.

You're done! Paycheck Secure looks at several factors, including the customer's check cashing history and the maker information, and makes a recommendation on whether you should accept the check. Green means Accept, and Red means Reject.

Zions Bank Signs with PBT

Zions Bank Is First Retail Bank to Bring Biometric Check Cashing Service to Utah and Idaho

Zions Express Powered by Pay By Touch, Offers Faster, Safer Transactions for Check-Cashing Customers



SALT LAKE CITY, July 5, 2006 Zions First National Bank, a subsidiary of Zions Bancorporation ZION ($77.06, -0.80, -1.0%) , and Pay By Touch today announced the introduction of biometric check-cashing to 12 locations throughout Utah and Idaho. The new service, powered by biometric payments leader Pay By Touch, uses a finger scan to quickly and securely identify customers when they are cashing a government or payroll check.

The new service, Zions Express powered by Pay By Touch is easy to use. Customers must first register at any participating Zions Bank branch. A bank employee will positively identify the customer using a government-issued photo ID, then digitally scan the customer's fingerprint and take an electronic photograph. The one-time signup process takes only minutes, and at subsequent visits to the bank the customer need only place his/her finger on the Zions Express scanner to safely and securely cash payroll checks.

"We are excited to be the first in Salt Lake City to provide our customers a secure, convenient and quick way to cash their checks," said Rob Brough, senior vice president of Zions Bank Corporate Communications. "Not only will bank customers experience shorter transaction times, they'll be protected from identify theft and fraud."

"Pay By Touch is helping Zions reduce fraud and provide better customer service," said John Rogers, founder, chairman, and CEO of Pay By Touch. "Hands down, the financial services market is ready for Pay By Touch. The time is now."

More than $8 billion in checks have been cashed using Pay By Touch's biometrically initiated check-cashing system. Pay By Touch recently acquired BioPay, the developer of the biometric check cashing system. To date, more than 2.5 million consumers are using the system to cash checks -- primarily in retail locations. Zions Bank is the first retail banker to implement the system in branch locations and is Pay By Touch's first retail banking customer.
For additional information about the Paycheck Secure product, visit www.paychecksecure.com.

About Pay By Touch(TM)

Pay By Touch is the global leader of biometric authentication, personalized rewards, and payment solutions. The company's patented biometric products and services enable shoppers to conveniently and securely access personal accounts using a finger scan to identify themselves, make purchases, cash checks, and earn rewards. Pay By Touch also provides robust payment processing solutions for ACH (electronic checking), card-present and card-not-present debit and credit transactions. To date, Pay By Touch services over 154,000 retail clients, manages personalized rewards programs for more than 130 million opt-in consumers, and has more than 2.5 million shoppers using biometric authentication products and services at 2,000+ locations coast to coast. Founded in 2002, Pay By Touch is a privately held company headquartered in San Francisco that employs more than 600 professionals and holds more than fifty U.S. issued patents. For additional company information, visit www.paybytouch.com.

About Zions Bank(TM)

Zions First National Bank is a subsidiary of Zions Bancorporation. Zions Bancorporation is one of the nation's premier financial services companies, consisting of a collection of great banks in select high growth markets. Zions operates its banking businesses under local management teams and community identities through over 450 offices and 500 ATMs in 10 Western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington. The company is a national leader in Small Business Administration lending and public finance advisory services. In addition, Zions is included in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Financial 100 indices. Investor information and links to subsidiary banks can be accessed at www.zionsbancorporation.com.

SOURCE Pay By Touch Leslie Connelly of Pay By Touch, +1-703-467-8332, or leslie.connelly@paybytouch.com; or Aaren Weidner of Porter Novelli, +1-408-369-4667, or aaren.weidner@porternovelli.com, for Pay By Touch; Rob Brough of Zions Bank, +1-801-594-8268, or rbrough@zionsbank.com http://www.prnewswire.com Copyright (C) 2006 PR Newswire. All rights reserved.

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As of Saturday, 07-01-2006 23:59, the latest Comtex SmarTrend(SM) Alert, an automated pattern recognition system, indicated a DOWNTREND on 06-21-2006 for ZION @ $79.69. For more information on Comtex SmarTrend® Alert, contact your market data provider or go to CSTADirect.com SmarTrend is a registered trademark of Comtex News Network, Inc. Copyright © 2004-2006 Comtex News Network, Inc. All rights reserved

"Touch" of Magic for UK Co Op

Midcounties Cooperative Wins Major industry Award with Pay By Touch

A pioneering system of paying for shopping with the touch of a finger has scooped a major industry award for The Midcounties Co-operative.

Pay By Touch, which was introduced to the UK at three Midcounties Co-op stores in Oxfordshire in March, has won the ‘Most Effective Use of IT in Retail’ award at the Information Age Effective IT 2006 awards in London.

The revolutionary new payment method has been launched at supermarkets in Carterton, Headington and Summertown, which are all in the Oxford area.

The trial is set to be extended to three other Midcounties Co-op stores later this year following encouraging customer feedback.

Pay By Touch allows customers to pay by using their finger and a memorable number, so no cash or cards are required.

The Effective IT awards celebrate the best of UK IT, with winners selected for their outstanding application of information technology in the creation of business value.

An independent judging panel, made up of some of the IT industry’s most senior executives, chose the winners from a record number of entries. Awards were presented at Room by the River in London.

Ben Reid, chief executive of The Midcounties Co-operative, said: “Pay By Touch has been a superb innovation for the business and our customers, and we are delighted to have picked up such a prestigious award for its successful introduction.

“It is a quick and secure method of payment for customers, as well as enhancing our reputation as one of the most innovative retailers in the UK.

“The initial planning was started by Oxford, Swindon and Gloucester Co-op, and following the merger with West Midlands Co-op that created The Midcounties Co-op last Autumn, we continued plans to implement this exciting new technology.”

A recent survey of 1,000 customers showed that the introduction of Pay By Touch was welcomed by 88 per cent of those questioned, with 85 per cent believing it was more convenient than Chip and Pin and 76 per cent saying it was more secure than Chip and Pin.

More than half the customers questioned said they had either registered for the system or intended to do so.

Kenny MacIver, Editor of Information Age and chair of the Effective IT judges, said:

“The judges were unanimous in their enthusiasm for the Midcounties Co-op project. Not only did it address a clear business requirement head on, but the bold adoption of cutting-edge technology produced great results in terms of security, speed, convenience and lower costs.”