LoopPay Inc., which provides the world’s first mobile payments solution accepted at the vast majority of retail point-of-sale terminals, announced that it has received an investment from global payments technology company Visa Inc. The investment is part of a larger strategic funding round for LoopPay, announced earlier this month, which includes Synchrony Financial (formerly GE Capital Retail Finance) and other strategic partners that are yet to be named.
LoopPay invented Magnetic Secure Transmission™ (MST) technology, which leverages existing point-of-sale infrastructure to receive contact-less payments from mobile devices of all kinds with no hardware changes required by merchants. MST aims to reduce reliance on magnetic stripes to store and transmit cardholder data, and instead uses a secure chip to store and transmit data to existing POS terminals via a small low-cost inductive loop that could be embedded in a variety of devices, including smartphones.
“Visa continually evaluates and invests in new technologies that have the potential to transform mobile devices into secure payment vehicles,” says Jim McCarthy, senior vice president of innovation and strategic partnerships at Visa Inc.
Payment cards, gift cards and loyalty cards can be securely loaded by consumers to their own LoopPay-enabled devices, or remotely provisioned by card issuers after proper user authentication and account setup. Payment card issuers can remotely provision not only static card data, but also tokenized or cryptographically signed payment data to provide more secure transactions for physical and online commerce.
LoopPay will also work with card issuers and app developers through its SDK (software development kits) to leverage its platform to enhance consumer commerce experiences via mobile. It also has its own LoopPay app, LoopWallet, to help users store and organize all their payment cards, membership cards, ID cards and reward cards.
“We are thrilled to have Visa as a partner and investor,” says Will Graylin, CEO of LoopPay. “We look forward to working with them and our other partners, including card issuers and device OEMs, to deliver the best possible commerce experience for both consumers and merchants alike as the world moves toward mobile payments.”
LoopPay recently announced the availability of its latest consumer product, the LoopPay ChargeCase, which enables mobile payments through a protective iPhone 5 and 5s case that also extends the iPhone’s battery life by up to 60 percent. The mobile payments company currently has two available products on the market, with many more devices — including those manufactured by various OEMs — anticipated within the upcoming months to offer device options for consumers.
The terms of the investment were not made available.
