Marc Barach, Jumio: "The challenges of payment security have always been a balancing act"

Marc leads Jumio’s worldwide marketing efforts and brings over 20 years of marketing innovation and operational experience in emerging technologies and the financial sector to Jumio. Previously, he served as CEO of mobile applications company Emotive, CMO of enterprise search SaaS pioneer Marin Software and CMO of Ingenio, where he sparked creation of pay-per-call technology; a multi-billion USD adtech product which lead to Ingenio’s acquisition by AT&T in 2007.

Step by step, the world seems to be going mobile as well, how does Jumio address the need for a more secure and improved mobile customer experience?

Marc Barach: As mobile consumers, we seem to have a voracious appetite to get the full range of life’s tasks accomplished on our connected devices. Conducting shopping, travel, banking, investing and more are now commonplace, but each one of these activities at some point requires the consumer to fill out long forms on their device. And that’s the problem. Numerous studies show that the more data a consumer must key enter in order to complete a process, the greater is their drop off. That’s something businesses cannot afford. Jumio’s mobile offerings use computer vision technology to scan and validate credentials obviating the need for time-consuming key entry. This allows consumers using our clients’ apps to speed though sign-up and checkout processes, which translates into higher completion rates and satisfaction. This service is offered through three of our products: Netverify, Netswipe and Fastfill.

Netswipe turns a customer’s phone into a secure credit card reader, eliminating the need for customers to manually enter credit card payment information. Consumers hold their credit card up to their mobile device and their card is automatically scanned, extracting cardholder name, 16-digit card number and expiration date. This takes seconds as opposed to typically a minute for key entry. By removing that friction from the process, Netswipe addresses the critical issue of shopping cart abandonment, which plagues almost every online and mobile merchant. Businesses using Netswipe in their mobile apps see conversion rates increase as much as 20 to 30% and sometimes higher.

Netverify allows businesses to authenticate their customers’ identities in real-time by validating their source credential of a passport, driver license or ID card. Consumers simply hold their ID up to their smartphone or desktop camera and Netverify validates the ID, extracts the personal info it contains and fills it into the sign-up on the checkout form. Identification documents issued by more than 100 countries are processed this way. In order to confirm that the person presenting the ID is the person shown in the ID, Jumio uses its proprietary Face Match technology to help businesses assess the extent to which a photo on an ID presented during a mobile or online transaction matches the customer’s actual face. This is a key differentiator in the industry, as no other solution provides the same breadth of real-time identity verification. Jumio’s Netverify also helps organizations meet KYC requirements and industry regulations, while reducing fraud and chargeback costs in purchase transactions.

Fastfill automates key entry of personal customer information in mobile apps, providing a faster and more convenient way for consumers to open accounts, complete web registration forms, and remove friction from the checkout process. With Fastfill, customers tap the “Scan ID” button on a business’ mobile app, hold their ID up to the device’s camera, and their personal data is extracted from the ID and populated into the new account form in an instant. Customers are no longer subjected to minutes of data entry on a small keypad entry and merchants don’t have to worry about losing customers in the sign-up process.

What are the biggest challenges when it comes to payment security for retailers and customers nowadays?

Marc Barach: The challenges of payment security have always been a balancing act. The industry is often toggling between making the payment process as convenient as possible for the consumer yet safe for the merchant. If that’s out of balance, which is often the case, the merchant is always on the failing end from either losing customers or having high chargeback and fraud costs. The two objectives, ease-of-use and fraud control, have historically been at opposite ends of the continuum – typically when security goes up, the consumer suffers and, if security is lax, the merchant suffers. Jumio has developed a service that breaks open that paradigm – so that both security and consumer experience are improved.

Companies such as Amazon pioneered the ‘one click’ purchase which is incredibly popular with consumers but, in our view, isn’t the end of the line. We’re working toward the goal of ‘no key entry’ transactions, which represents the next step on the ease-of-use trajectory. This means that real-time authentication activities need to take place behind the scenes while the consumer sails through the transaction. Online merchants spend so much time, money and energy getting people to their websites and apps and often forget that getting them successfully through the sign-up and checkout processes are just as important to meeting their revenue goals.

In your opinion, what is the best approach to ensure secure payments and online fraud prevention?

Marc Barach: Most security processes today use indirect ways such as knowledge-based authentication to authenticate the ID of the transacting customer. These can be effective, but none of them are as good as using the source document (passport, driver license, government ID) or as consumer friendly. Fast, easy and intuitive processes are what create great consumer experiences, which contribute to higher completion rates and revenue. As consumers become more sophisticated, especially on mobile, the tolerance for slow and complex processes is diminishing. At the end of the day, merchants have to figure out how to manage fraud without turning away legitimate consumers. Our whole business is built around making sure we do exactly that.

Jumio has recently launched the Bitcoin Identity Security Open Network. With cyber-criminals often using digital currencies like Bitcoin to commit illegal transactions, how does the network plan to boost trust and confidence in the Bitcoin ecosystem?

Marc Barach: BISON was created to instill greater confidence in the Bitcoin system by providing the industry with a standardized way to validate buyer identities when in the process of establishing a relationship or conducting a transaction. It’s a reaction to some of the confidence-shaking events that have plagued the Bitcoin industry. The industry recognizes that smart self-regulation is much better than external regulation and now is the time to put that infrastructure in place.

The Bitcoin exchanges, wallets, ATMs and mining companies in the BISON network have come together as a first step in this self-regulatory process. Using Netverify, these providers can meet KYC practices while weeding out fake or manipulated IDs, which is usually a precursor for fraud or other illegal activities. BISON members also receive aggregated fraud trend information across the network. Lastly, and perhaps the most exciting feature of BISON, is that customers’ validation status and PII travel with them wherever they transact within the network. That means that a customer presents and scans their ID the first time with one Bitcoin company, and when they go to transact with another member, their validated status and data is automatically imported into that transaction, and vice-versa. The friction removal manifests itself in higher completion rates and consumer satisfaction. This feature of the Network launches later in 2014.

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