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Semafone and Commidea reduce payment risks for contact centres

Commidea solution reduces the scope and cost of PCI DSS for call centre agents; safely transmits payment data

1st August, 2011, London – Commidea today announced the integration of Semafone’s contact centre software with Commidea’s payment gateway. The combined solution increases the safety of payment processing for contact centres without compromising customer service.

The combined solution ensures contact centre agents do not come into contact with any customer card payment details, by masking them as they are entered and sending them directly through to Commidea’s PCI DSS level 1 certified processing infrastructure for processing. During a phone transaction, customers enter payment details on their telephone keypad, which produce non-traceable monotonous beeps, while the call centre agent remains on the line to ensure the payment is processed correctly. Card details are then transmitted directly to Commidea’s secure payment gateway for authorisation by the merchant’s acquiring bank.

For regular and recurring payments, tokenisation from Commidea is also used to ensure that the merchant has no need to store sensitive card details on its system. The technology reduces the scope and cost for call centres to achieve and maintain PCI DSS compliance, as it removes a portion of the compliance criteria thus simplifying the entire process. The cost savings can be up to several million pounds depending on the size of the contact centre and the volume of transactions.

“Combining Semafone and Commidea’s technology is a positive step for the call centre industry,” said Ian Rutland, Managing Director at Commidea. “Our combined solution simplifies a merchant’s PCI compliance efforts by reducing the areas that contain cardholder data, considerably reducing the associated PCI DSS compliance costs for contact centres and makes payments safer for consumers.”

“Semafone is unique in its ability to eliminate payment details audibly and from the view of the contact centre staff,” said Graham Thompson, Sales and Marketing Director at Semafone. “Combined with Commidea, we can reduce the burden of PCI compliance for contact centres, saving costs to the organisation and greatly reducing the risk of payment fraud to consumers. It also frees up contact centre staff to focus on delivering top customer service.”

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About Commidea and Point International
Commidea is part of the Point International Group of companies. Point is the leading European provider of electronic payment solutions and supports over 250,000 customers in the Nordic, Baltics and the UK through the provision of innovative and secure card payment solutions. Every day more than 7 million secure card transactions are handled through Point solutions. The Group manage more than 450,000 payment devices and customers range from large high street retail names to small independents, award winning e-commerce sites and many leading mail order companies. Point also operates an installed base of more than 5000 ATMs in the region. The Group is present in the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and employs over 600 staff.

Commidea has built a reputation for reliability, innovation and excellence and has developed Ocius, a Chip & PIN solution which is pre-certified by the banking community that has set new standards within the industry. Ocius Sentinel, is the first UK certified solution to offer complete end-to-end encryption enabling fast and secure processing.

Working with a network of business partners throughout the UK, Commidea delivers a managed, PCI DSS compliant, multi-channel payment solution to all sizes of business. Commidea also supports many of the country’s leading specialist distributors and system integrators. 

www.commidea.com and www.pointinternational.com

About Semafone
Founded in 2009 Semafone is fast being recognized as the leader in secure voice transactions. In 2010, Semafone received the European Call Centre 2010 Award for the most innovative product. The company provides solutions for contact centres to take voice payments without agents every having to hear or see card details. Unlike automated payment IVRs, callers remain in voice communications throughout the call. Not only are all contact centre payments PCI DSS compliant, Semafone can also take the contact centre out of scope from PCI DSS, thus saving vast compliance costs for each of its customers. Beyond payments Semafone is able to secure the capture of any numeric data within the contact centre e.g. direct debits or identification and verification information. Semafone is working with a number of industry leading partners bringing the Semafone solution to market globally.

www.semafone.com

For more information contact:
Nikki Scrivener
Fourth Day PR
020 7403 4411
nikki@fourthday.co.uk