Bright Idea: Keeping Tabs on Your Credit Card’s Whereabouts

With fraud so rampant, its no wonder credit card companies are quick to freeze purchases when they spot a departure from routine by, say, noting a credit card was used hundreds of miles from home. Bellevue-based Finsphere has found a way around that inconvenience.

Visa recently announced that it licensed Finsphere technology to offer what it calls mobile location confirmation. In less than a second, the technology confirms whether or not a cardholders smartphone is in roughly the same location as the store in which a Visa user is making a purchase.

We use your smartphone to authenticate your identity, says Finsphere CEO Mike Buhrmann.

Consumers can voluntarily opt in to the system by downloading a mobile banking app, which notifies the bank when you travel to another city. If you then make a purchase far from home, Visa can use the presence of your smartphone to confirm the purchase with little fear that its a fraudulent transaction. Visa figures the technology will reduce fraud activity by 30 percent.
Being able to put a card and device together is a pretty powerful indication that the person making the transaction is legitimate, says D.J. Murphy, editor-in-chief of CardNotPresent.com, which covers the credit card industry.

Buhrmann says Finsphere is in conversations with other credit card companies. But as more credit cards come embedded with semiconductor chips and require PIN codes for use, experts anticipate a growing proportion of fraud moving online.

To address that problem, Finsphere expects by the end of this year to introduce technology that will help credit card companies confirm that a persons cell phone is close to the area from which the cardholder is accessing the internet.

If you are accessing the internet from work [to make a purchase], notes Buhrmann, your phone should be at work. Conversely, he points out that if someone with your card is gaining access to the internet from Romania, your phone should not be at your place of work.

Finsphere, which has 20 employees, is also working on technology that could make sure those who gain access to an individuals health care files have the proper authority to do so.