Canadian Retailer - Holiday 2015 - 16

FEATURE INTERVIEW

to be. That's why we have under a basis point of
fraud. Canada has enjoyed the fruits of an EMV
chip market now for years and it has paid off for
certain. But card-not-present fraud-fraudsters
will go to the weakest link. Some of the losses in
that segment are astronomical.
We make sure in our product sets we're not
open to a lot of those areas of card-not-present
fraud. With our online product we use a form
of tokenization, and we don't allow PINs to accompany the transaction (or be stored) so those
types of hacks don't affect us. Unlike many of
our competitor solutions it's not a mag-stripe
transaction just online; it's a more secure transaction with Interac Online. And we are similarly
focused on security as we build our new in-app
solutions, which is where the market is going.
Tokenization is a new security layer that is
going to be pervasive in all payments. Apple
Pay uses tokenization, Android Pay; all of these
are using this tokenization technology, which
we will embrace to ensure that we continue to
be the most secure payment method available
for Canadian merchants and consumers.

Now people are doing on the fly mobile transactions. Our in-app is
also going to be a tokenized embedded product using the same credentials that you use to put your physical card in mobile phones, so
the same credentials are going to be used when you're holding your
phone to a terminal or when you're just using your fingerprint and
pushing the 'buy this' button in-app, whether it's within a merchants
app or whether it's within the mobile wallet itself.
So think about that. It's blurring the lines.
I walk into a Gap store and I'm looking around. I can purchase
using the in-app and never go up to the terminal. And this is where
it's going. You already see it. You see these MPOS [Mobile Point of
Sale] offerings, you see small merchants using the iPad as a terminal, like when you go to an Apple Store and they just walk up to you
and say 'want to check out with me right now, and the transaction is
done. Again, it gets to convenience, speed. We're making sure that
Interac Debit is in all of those product sets.
But where it's going to develop from there is that the actual transaction is going to emanate from inside the application, whether
you're inside the physical store or not, and it's going to be authenticated through the Cloud.

LEBLANC: Where are you taking the product

O'CONNELL: And you know what we're seeing in the Interac Flash
numbers? When you promote it and when people start using Interac Flash, the entire spectrum of debit goes up. So even the PIN
debit numbers go up for those merchants, which is great because
both are lower cost than credit and [even] cash.
I have been so pleased. Almost every visit I go to now is so different than eight years ago. [Then] everyone claimed cash was their
lowest, Interac second. Now we have done all-in studies and it truly
is Interac Debit at the lowest, Interac Flash next, followed by cash,
and then credit at the most expensive. So anytime they can take
from credit or cash and lower their costs...they win.

from an online transaction perspective?

O'CONNELL: The laptop is not the main point
of entry to the payment system anymore. It is
iPads and tablets and phones. We see it in all of
our products. Interac e-transfer transactions are
initiated more off mobile devices than they are
off laptops, for example. You used to sit down
and send your money to your child in university
once a week on your laptop.

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CANADIAN RETAILER | HOLIDAY 2015

LEBLANC: For generations, cash has been the preferred tender

type for small transactions and then debit. But now there's a lot of
marketing that's kind of shifting that to credit.

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