Industry leaders partner to create best-of-breed PCI-compliance solution suite for secure voice payment processing.
Cognia, leaders in communications intelligence solutions, and secure voice payment specialist, Semafone, have announced a partnership that will enable contact centers world-wide to transform the security and compliance costs of handling customer payment information.
By combining the skills and technology of Cognia and Semafone, a new breed of solution will be available to the market that will allow contact center agents to take customer card payments in line with international Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) without the substantial compliance and security costs, and operational limitations associated with traditional approaches such as pause-and-resume recording.
Both companies are innovators in their fields. Last year Cognia became the world’s first provider to achieve QSA-validated compliance with PCI DSS as a Level 1 Service Provider on a global cloud platform. Semafone, who is also a PCI DSS Level 1 accredited Service Provider, holds a PA-DSS certification for its payment solution and is also a Visa level 1 merchant agent; its secure payment processing solutions are rapidly becoming an industry standard for agent-on-call secure payment processing and its customer base spans five continents.
The suite of services will include PCI-compliant DTMF-masking, automated IVR payment processing, agent monitoring and recording, and secure archiving for legacy ‘at-risk’ media. A combination of on-premise and cloud based deployment models will be available for ultimate local to global scalability.
Curtis Nash, CEO of Cognia commented, “The crucial element in this alliance is about delivering more choice and greater flexibility to customers. As two leading innovators in the payment processing and communications capture and analytics cloud space, we feel that the strength of our solutions working together will lead the market for secure payment processing in an area where the security threat is still high and where enterprises of all types need to assure a low security risk as well as compliance.”
Tim Critchley, CEO of Semafone added, “The risk of fraudulent activity in the cardholder not present sector is growing as criminals use increasingly more sophisticated technology to obtain personal payment data. Customers now hold brands to account for the protection of their card details and will simply shop elsewhere if they feel that their security is at risk. Our partnership with Cognia marks another milestone in the battle against card fraud and in the protection of our customers’ brand & reputation.”
About Cognia
Cognia is a leader in the provision of cloud-based communications and interaction intelligence solutions for enterprises and service providers. A single platform provides secure capture, storage and analytics solutions for multi-channel communications, including fixed-line and mobile, as well as all IP communications.
Cognia’s solutions include cloud based call recording, the world’s first QSA-validated, PCI DSS Level 1 service on a secure global cloud platform and interaction analytics that form part of its communications intelligence suite. This replaces the high upfront capital and support costs of on-premise systems, with the flexibility to lower TCO to a level never before possible with traditional solutions.
Cognia’s solutions are used world-wide by over a 100 financial institutions, enterprises and services providers including Vodafone. Cognia has over 28 million media assets under management in its cloud.
For more information please go to www.cognia.com or take the product tour
About Semafone
Semafone provides software to contact centers so they can take secure credit and debit card payments over the phone. Using Semafone’s patented payment method, card data is transmitted directly from the customer’s telephone keypad to the bank. This takes the contact center out of scope of PCI DSS regulations, removing the threat of fraud and its associated reputational damage.
Semafone is a PCI DSS Level 1 accredited Service Provider, holds a PA-DSS certification for its payment solution and is a Visa level 1 merchant agent.
The company serves a wide range of industry sectors including financial services, media, retail, utilities, travel and tourism and the public sector. Customers include Virgin Holidays, Aviva Canada, TalkTalk, Nemo Personal Finance, Sky and Yorkshire Water.
Founded in 2009, Semafone received a £1.9m investment from Octopus Ventures in 2010 and a further £1.5m, primarily from existing investors, in 2012.
Further information about Semafone is available at www.semafone.com.
Semafone and Secured by Semafone are the registered trademarks of Semafone Limited.
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