With presently existing electronic payment services customers are providing their personal information to a merchant or to other third party service providers and at this point they loose track and control. They have no way to know what is happening with their sensitive private information, how and when it is used and for what purposes. It is of no surprise that people do not like this approach, and until something better is available they rather do not make payments on electronic channels.

SEMOPS makes a difference in this regards. Due to the credit push concept applied in the process flow the customer is the driver of the payment process. Nothing can happen that customers would not approve or agree with.

The customer only communicates sensitive information with its trusted partners – its own Bank or Mobile Network Operator – and does not provide any such information to either the merchant or to any third party operator. This process flow prevents misuse of the customer’s sensitive information, the transaction cannot be repeated by anyone else, at any other time. This structure does not only ensure trust on the customer’s side, but also allows the buyer to retain its anonymity with the merchant, if he wishes so.

To extend the concept of data and customer protection even the payment processors are restricted in getting access to the whole set of transactions details. Any actors of the payment process are only having access to those pieces of data, which are necessary for them to carry out the transactions, but to nothing more.

Trust and security is ensured on the merchant’s side as well. Although merchants may not know, who the actual buyer is, but they do not even need to, as it is the merchant’s trusted partner, its payment processor – Bank, MNO – who guarantees payment to the merchant. Merchants really do not care, where the money is coming from, their only interest is, that a certain transaction is paid for. The SEMOPS service ensures payment, and as such, increases collection security to a great extent. 

Security has a number of other aspects as well.

All transactions get individually approved by the buyer, with the input of a PIN. The PIN can even be used in connection with PKI signatures. Sensitive personal information is not stored in the system. Transaction details are only captured at one’s own payment processor. All communication is encrypted using public-private key infrastructure. The procedure does not only rely on SW and HW protection, but internal rules, controlling systems and regular independent security audits also increase security.