PayPal To Use Cellphones To Authenticate Payments
Written by Evan SchumanNovember 26th, 2008
PayPal has come up with yet another payment-related use of a cellphone: to authenticate a non-mobile E-Commerce transaction. Customers of the payment giant “can now choose to receive a unique six-digit security code via text message to their mobile phones prior to logging in to their accounts,” PayPal said in a Nov. 24 statement.
PayPal has already been using two-factor authentication with a physical device (the PayPal Security Key), but using SMS and mobile leverages hardware consumers already have. Consumers would have to use the codes in addition to their regular username/password combos.
One Comment | Read PayPal To Use Cellphones To Authenticate Payments
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December 6th, 2008 at 12:57 am
What’s interesting to me is that at least one iPhone app maker has taken payment via mobile device even further. The application, Credit Card Terminal, turns the iPhone into a virtual terminal which can process customers’ credit cards–no other equipment required. (It does require a connection to a transaction processor but you’d expect that.)