ETranzact patents ATM mobile cardless technology

Nigeria's first fully operational electronic transaction switching and payment processing platform, eTranzact, announced on Friday the patenting of its latest technology, the eTranzact CardlexCash ATM.

The ATM's (automatic teller machine's) mobile cardless technology allows customers to transfer funds from their mobile phones to the mobile phones of recipients who can then collect the funds at any cash machine without the use of an ATM card, explained Valentine Obi, chief executive of eTranzact.

"The product would leverage on a subscriber's mobile phone, the eTranzact platform and ATM processor of partnering banks to make fund transfer and collection convenient for the end users," he said.

ETranzact has advanced plans to make CardlexCash available in all countries where it currently operates, Obi said, namely in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, the U.K., the U.S. and Zimbabwe. The company also has patents in Asia, he said, and eTranzact's expansion plans will translate to the seamless transfer of funds across borders.

In addition, the company has introduced eTranzact Strong Authentication (ESA) on its platform in order to simplify electronic transactions and guarantee maximum security for both the banking institutions and their customers.

"It provides a solution to the age-old insecurity problem of chip-based cards and offers a harmonization of cards of various banks via a single mobile phone," Obi said.

As card cloning and PIN (personal identification number) disclosure have become threats to card-based transactions, ESA will generate one-time pass codes for each transaction through a process known as 2FA (two-factor authentication), he explained.

"Should a customer fall victim to a phishing scam or cloned Web site and give both user name and password, a third party can never defraud the customer due to lack of the dynamic PIN residual on the mobile phone," he said.

With an official launch planned for Lagos by the end of the month, Obi noted that CardlexCash will target Nigeria's 50 million-plus mobile phone subscribers.