The agreement will allow Visa Europe to integrate and market the solutions as services to its member banks as part of its European processing platform.

VALid-POS, a groundbreaking fraud prevention solution, uses telecommunication technology accessing the global mobile phone network to confirm, in real time, whether a cardholder's mobile phone is within the proximity of the ATM or merchant terminal at which the card is being used. This practice minimises the number of inappropriately declined cross-border transactions and, subsequently, improves fraud discovery rates. This results in reduced case-management processing costs for Issuers, reduced fraud levels and, critically, a greatly improved customer experience with legitimate transactions approved within one second.

VALid is a telecommunications based (Voice and SMS) solution that uses two separate channels designed specifically for combating the most advanced fraudulent techniques such as Man-in-the-Middle and Man-in-the-Browser, along with the more traditional attack vectors.

VALid integrates with VALid-POS where additional location based information is required for authentication, or where automated resolution is necessary.

Steve Chambers, Visa Europe's Chief Information Officer (CIO), said: "Security is fundamental to Visa Europe's business and we feel that the solutions offered by ValidSoft can help us in our continuous efforts to address the increasingly sophisticated methods used by criminals. Visa Europe will never cease in finding ways to protect the interests of our European member banks and help them, in turn, protect those of their cardholders."

Pat Carroll, CEO of ValidSoft Limited, said: "We are absolutely delighted to be working in partnership with Visa Europe. Our solutions are at the forefront of technology innovation and we believe the convergence of payments and mobile telecommunications aligns with the underlying principles of VALid-POS: proximity correrelation of a transaction to a mobile phone".