ValidSoft is the first, and remains the only, security software company in the world to be awarded the European Privacy Seal. The December renewal provides further validation that VALid-POS can fight fraud while maintaining full privacy.

VALid-POS can save banks hundreds of millions of dollars a year by helping to determine whether credit and debit card transactions are legitimate or fraudulent. Visa Europe recently issued a press release reporting how ValidSoft can assist Visa Europe with sophisticated fraud detection and prevention with its solutions VALid-POS and VALid:

VALid-POS, works by correlating the origination of a purchase or withdrawal using a credit or debit card to the proximity of the card owner through the card owner's cell phone. That's a major improvement on the traditional method of trying to spot fraud, in which banks compare new purchases and transactions to past patterns. If a credit card typically used in London is suddenly buying goods in San Francisco, for instance, those new purchases may be flagged as suspicious.

In most cases, the credit card owner really will be in San Francisco buying goods. But to make sure, the bank has to try to contact the customer. As a result, legitimate transactions mistakenly labeled as suspicious-so-called 'false positives'-are a huge expense and headache for banks. Banks often cut off credit cards because transactions look suspicious, only to be left with irate customers. The problem for banks is that 90% of these seemingly suspicious transactions are actually legitimate. The cost to banks is upwards of $100 billion a year in the US alone1.

ValidSoft's system virtually eliminates the false positives, while also spotting the truly fraudulent transactions. The technology works in microseconds, without compromising customers' privacy.

"The renewal of the Privacy Seal for two years confirms that VALid-POS meets the highest standards for maintaining customers' pustomers' privacy, while providing the maximum protection against fraud," said Pat Carroll, CEO of ValidSoft Limited. "We are delighted to have passed our first renewal examination and will continue to ensure that VALid-POS meets all the requirements of European Data Protection law. We understand the enormous benefit this compliance brings to the product as well to the banks and processors that implement it. We change the 90% failure rate in identifying fraud into a 90%-plus success rate."

"The VALid-POS product shows that privacy protection and effective fraud prevention measures are not a sub-zero game: it achieves at the same time both better protection against fraud, and the highest standards of data protection", says Professor Douwe Korff, a renowned expert in Data Protection and Data Privacy legislation. "Companies that choose this product can thus at the same time serve their own and their customers' interests in the full knowledge that their customers' privacy is not in any way put at risk and that they also will benefit from the strongest form of defence against a primary source of funding for organised crime and terrorist activities2."

1 Source Gartner Research and Javelin Research - 2009
2 Source Timesonline - Fraudsters' bugs transmit credit card details to Pakistan - October 12, 2008