Mobeewave, a pioneer in contactless payment acceptance, is launching a suite of innovative new features that remove current contactless payment limits for merchants and consumers around the world using its tap-to-phone technology.

The company develops solutions that enable businesses to accept contactless payments by tapping a card or a digital wallet onto the back of an NFC-enabled mobile device – without the need for dongles, card readers or additional hardware.

Contactless payments are currently capped at around $100 in Canada and Australia (depending on the issuer), where contactless penetration is at over 80%. In Europe, contactless limits are usually lower and vary by market. To add complexity, the revised Payment Service Directive (PSD2) requires banks to implement a PIN request from the consumer after every five contactless payments, or once payments have totaled €150 EUR/£135.

For tap-to-phone payments, entering a PIN on the screen of a merchant’s mobile device presents a number of challenges. These include requiring additional hardware for PIN entry, as well as the fact that today, PIN for contactless is not supported in some countries such as Canada, France and the UK (due to the PIN technology used in those countries). PIN entry also presents additional user experience and security challenges when entering a personal PIN number on someone else’s device.

Mobeewave Limitless™ is a full suite of high value transaction contactless tap-to-phone features that cater to the varied authentication challenges, regulatory environments and Cardholder Verification Method (CVM) requirements across North America, Europe and APAC. The solution, which has been successfully tested, comes in several flavors, including a secure PIN-based solution and one that leverages a user’s CVV number to authenticate their payment.

However, the most innovative solution in the Mobeewave Limitless™ portfolio leverages 3D Secure 2.0, a newly released security standard that is used for online card not present transactions, effectively removing the need for a PIN to be used to authenticate the cardholder during a tap-to-phone payment. Combined with a card tap, Mobeewave’s 3DS solution combines Authorization with Authentication methods without the need for PIN, enabling a high value contactless transaction by initiating a 3DS check, which provides an authentication request to the consumer on their own device.  This solution also shifts the chargeback and fraud liability from the merchant to the card issuer.

“PIN entry on a consumer off the shelf (COTS) device can present a number of issues when needing to make a high value purchase,” explained Eran Hollander, EVP Product at Mobeewave. Our Mobeewave Limitless™ solution eliminates all of these while shifting the liability of the transaction away from the merchant. With Mobeewave Limitless™, we combine risk mitigation best practices of both card not present and card present technologies. We are also in discussion with payment schemes to look at discount fees based on the solution at hand, rather than the technology rail it rides on, similar to how mobile transaction fees have evolved.”

“The use of contactless payments continues to grow around the world, and with the current health and security challenges that both merchants and consumers are facing, it’s become more critical than ever to accommodate high value contactless transactions,” added Maxime de Nanclas, co-founder and co-CEO at Mobeewave. “We’re the first to market a solution that uses what we believe to be the CVM process of the future, 3DS, via mobile devices and AI technology, to enable a fully digital seamless experience for both consumers and merchants. We’re excited to see how the pilots run and to be able to roll-out Mobeewave Limitless™ over the next few weeks.”

The Mobeewave Limitless™ 3DS solution, which is patent pending, has been approved by the main payment schemes and will be rolled out to merchants in April 2020, including to those using the Samsung POS app, which is powered by Mobeewave