payleven, the mobile payments solutions provider, has exclusively announced at Apps World a Chip and PIN technology which utilises Visa across Europe.

TelecomsTech caught up with Rafael Otero, CTO and managing director of payleven, at Apps World to discuss the technology and what it will mean for mobile payment trends.

One of the biggest barriers in utilising mobile payments relates to the bigger card providers, such as MasterCard and more prominently Visa, disallowing the technology.

However payleven’s product is fully compliant with the standards of all major debit and credit cards. “Having a fully-fledged Chip and PIN solution which is fully compliant opens up Visa acceptance points – it opens up a huge consumer basis for the merchants”, notes Otero.

So why did payleven go down the route of Chip and PIN? According to Otero, there was a lot of thought put into the design.

“We put quite some effort into understanding from a card scheme perspective and from risk and security perspectives – ‘what is the ideal solution, what is the ideal technology?’” said Otero.

“That’s why we definitely opted from a very early beginning to go down the path of chip and PIN, which actually takes a lot of time, and a lot of effort, and also a lot of infrastructure that you need to put in place to be able to rollout the product,” he added.

The technology, which utilises Bluetooth and links to smartphones and tablets, will appear to be good news for the UK market, given the prevalence of Chip and PIN as well as Visa’s market dominance accounting for approximately three quarters of annual card transactions in the UK.

This is evidently another piece in the mobile payments sphere. But can all the technologies – Chip and PIN, swipe and sign, for instance, co-exist?

Otero argues yes, but because of locational elements.

“Acceptance is varying even on a geographical location and also on the authorisation method itself,” he said, adding: “If you take a look at the UK market, everybody uses chip and PIN today. It’s cumbersome to put another authorisation method into the UK market.”