PayWave system just as safe as chip and pin, argue Visa and O2

NFC mobile payments are just as secure and tamper proof as traditional chip and pin transactions, according to O2 and Visa, who are hoping to entice consumers and businesses to embrace mobile payment tools.
Visa head of mobile business, Sandra Alzetta, told V3 the firm is ensuring the company's existing and future NFC payment services are held to the same security standards as its existing card payment services.
"PayWave is made to be as secure as our chip and pin card. It has the same security and encryption standards. We did that because we believe it is the future and we don't to take a step backwards," she said.
The Visa head added the firm is ensuring the features protect users personal data and are designed to let people use them with anonymity. "We do collect a huge amount of data. But in terms of what we collect we don't know whose account number it is. So we don't know if it's a man or a woman, or if they're in their mid-twenties," she said.
"We don't know any of that, we just know that there's an account number and it does certain things. That can still help companies quite a lot and we're looking at how we can take that data, if you buy in and only if you buy into combine it with other data. Visa has no idea who you are."
O2 strategy business director Tomas Masar confirmed the firm is taking the same approach with its Visa-compliant NFC Sim-cards. The Sim-cards are created in partnership with Visa, O2 and participating banks and let users sync their bank account with their phone, storing the information on a sandboxed area of the card.
Masar said the cards have been designed with customer security in mind. "There will be a standardised way to transfer the bank data. We'll give them [banks] a secure place on the Sim card. We then give them a one-time password so they can load the data onto the Sim card and encrypt it. Then we close the door and password so it's secure," he said.
The O2 director said users' more personal relationships with their mobile phones will also lead to a number of fringe security features. "We bring additional safety features to the phone, by adding remote access to the payment service and remote wipe," he said.
"Also, an additional safety aspect is you don't want to be without your phone, meaning you'll notice if it goes missing. With your traditional payment card you can lose it and only find days later, whereas, with a phone you use it all the time, so you'll know within half an hour."
The new comes during a wider push by Visa to increase interest in its mobile payment services. The push has seen the firm strike strategic partnerships with numerous network carriers and mobile phone manufacturers to integrate its NFC payment solutions into their products, Visa claims the deals will cause a boom in the number of mobile transactions made in Europe, prophesying half of all payments will be made using a mobile by 2020.