Matt Wilcox Pro

If you’ve ever worried about hackers making huge charges on your credit card or emptying your checking account, Visa® has good news. It plans to introduce microchip authentication for U.S. debit and credit cards, making it harder for unscrupulous scoundrels to access your account.

These “Chip-and-PIN” cards will feature an embedded microchip and require a four digit PIN, so they are expected to provide enhanced security through a process called “dynamic authentication.” According to the Visa® press release, “Chip technology greatly reduces a criminal’s ability to use stolen payment card data by introducing dynamic values for each transaction. Even if payment card data is compromised, a counterfeit card would be unusable at the point-of-sale without the presence of the card’s unique elements. By eliminating static authentication, we reduce the value of stolen cardholder data, benefiting all stakeholders.”

Chip-and-PIN cards look like regular credit and debit cards, except for an added metallic chip. For consumers, day-to-day usage shouldn’t change. Just swipe and enter a PIN as always.

Despite the increased cost of replacing lost, stolen, and expired cards, the greatly enhanced level of security makes the new technology an attractive bargain.

An obstacle to adoption of Chip-and-PIN cards in the U.S. is merchants who aren’t terribly excited at the prospect of having to purchase chip-compatible terminals. To overcome this, Visa® will use a “carrot-and-stick” approach. The carrot: merchants who reach a certain adoption level can skip the annual security validation process, saving substantial compliance costs. The stick: liability for fraudulent use of the old cards will shift from card issuers to merchants who do not upgrade.

MasterCard has already introduced a similar card in Canada, so we can expect something from them in the U.S. soon. Visa® expects the new technology to be in stores and operational by April 2013.

Online banking platforms have long been heralded for the level of convenience they offer customers, but new research shows there are financial benefits for both consumers and banks as well.

A recent Fiserv reports explains that customers who receive e-statements and e-bills through online banking platforms are 64 percent less likely to contact Customer Service representatives regarding their accounts each month than those who receive hard copies, American Banker reports. Instead, these customers find resolutions through online banking services. The trend allows financial institutions that offer these services to save roughly $4 per each call center phone call, the news source adds. Other institutions have corroborated these claims.

“Our data shows that customers through our online and mobile banking services, [including electronic bill presentment], adopt an array of electronic, alert and information capabilities over time,” Wells Fargo Internet Services Group senior vice president Adam Vancini told American Banker.

Separate data also shows that individuals enrolled in online banking were more likely to pay their bills on time and stay more involved in their finances.

*The below article was originally published by American Banker on August 17, 2011. Click here for the original article.

Web fields were turning into mine fields for Dollar Bank’s customers, who were getting trapped by a simple navigation error that was cutting off their online banking sessions.

“People were being instructed to enter a city and ZIP code for one of the links,” but many instead entered their city and state, says Pam Dancisin, a vice president of marketing for the $7 billion-asset bank. “It wasn’t a big error, but it was a major inconvenience. And we were having a lot of issues like that.”

As a fix, the Pittsburgh bank licensed navigation analysis software from the customer experience management company Tealeaf Technology Inc. The software resides alongside the bank’s Web banking platform and tracks Web sessions by observing the flow of data and other information between the browser and other systems.

It spots variances in the normal rules-based flow of that information, which could be signs that people are unable to log in or getting “timed out” too quickly. The software can identify the server or program that’s the source of the glitch.

For Web session glitches that have taken place after the user has logged in, the bank’s contact center can identify the customer and proactively reach out to help complete the transaction that was interrupted on the Web.

The bank’s customer service, sales, marketing and technology staff can access a dashboard to see how Web sessions are failing, and can also determine trends in navigation issues. The dashboard can also quickly alert programmers about other problems.

“We’ve had a number of issues that customers have been complaining about, such as a missing page or a navigation that didn’t work,” says Dancisin, such as the session “timing out” before the normal 15-minute timeout window. “We’re now able to locate these problems and pass them off to a programmer to fix.”

Tealeaf spokesman Geoff Galat says many of these navigation glitches are caused by the complexity of Web banking platforms, which actually combine a number of front- and back-end systems that manage tasks ranging from account opening, customer relationship management, information inquiries and payments to mobile banking and marketing.

At Zions Bancorp, which manages a network of affiliate banks, this complexity was deepened by an ongoing website relaunch at four of its affiliates. Zions uses the Tealeaf tool to monitor its various sites, as well as to troubleshoot problems that arise as consumers adjust to the new products and features that the $56 billion-asset institution is adding to its Web application.

“We used to rely on just a Web-based tool that monitored the Web and gave us page-view responses,” says Matt Wilcox, who says the Salt Lake City institution is also planning to deploy the software for its mobile banking applications. “We’ll now be able to view the flow and timing of what Web users are looking at.”