With its licensing of Visa’s 3-D Secure protocol, American Express has announced SafeKey, an online payment fraud prevention solution. Akin to Visa’s own 3-D Secure product, Verified by Visa, SafeKey provides cardholders and online merchants a way to authenticate purchases using an additional factor. American Express joins its rival payment card networks as 3-D Secure licensees, putting SafeKey in the market along with VbV, MasterCard SecureCode, and JCB J/Secure.
“American Express is committed to combating fraud for our merchants and cardmembers who transact online. American Express SafeKey is a new tool that will augment our fraud prevention solutions,” said Suzan Kereere, Senior Vice President of Global Network Operations for American Express. “As part of our commitment to global technology standards, American Express SafeKey was designed using 3-D Secure specifications to ensure industry-consistent processes and functionality.”
“We are pleased with American Express’ decision to license the 3-D Secure Protocol and we think this is a positive development for the industry and eCommerce. This reaffirms the position of 3-D Secure as the Internet authentication standard of choice,” said Jim McCarthy, Global Head of Product for Visa.
Visa and American Express support the development of global, open standards and recognize that a global authentication standard supports the continued growth of e-commerce. Visa continues to work with other industry leaders to accelerate the global adoption of 3-D Secure and welcomes industry participation in further expanding the global deployment of the 3-D Secure specification for Internet security and authentication. Using open authentication standards is an important and welcome step for the payments industry and the online marketplace.
American Express will enable SafeKey in Singapore and the UK on 8 November 2010 and begin working with merchants and card issuers in these markets to roll out the technology.
Read the Original Press Release: http://about.americanexpress.com/news/pr/2010/safekey.aspx