In addition to enabling new in-store mobile applications, the solution is supported by VeriFone's PAYware Connect gateway for remote payment acceptance outside of store environments.

PAYware Mobile Enterprise incorporates a PCI-approved PIN debit keypad, which allows merchants to leverage dramatically lower transaction costs, and a 2D bar code scanner for quickly and efficiently performing mobile check out or inventory control tasks. In addition, PAYware Mobile Enterprise features built-in NFC and EMV smartcard capabilities, ensuring North American retailers are ready to embrace NFC-enabled mobile phones and the highly anticipated rollout of EMV smartcards.

"With PAYware Mobile Enterprise, retailers can revolutionize customer service and store operations by utilizing versatile mobile applications and secure payment acceptance integrated with existing POS infrastructure," said Erik Vlugt, VeriFone vice president of product marketing. "VeriFone's card encryption and tokenization solution for smart devices isolates payment actions to ensure retailers can maintain a secure payment environment."

PAYware Mobile Enterprise is the first commercially viable solution to integrate mobile payment devices into a PCI-compliant environment and drastically reduce PCI scope and the merchant's overall risk profile.

Smartphones and WiFi-equipped PDAs, while rich application platforms, were not designed for use as payment acceptance devices and thus generally do not adhere to payment industry security requirements. To keep these otherwise vulnerable mobile devices out of PCI scope, PAYware Mobile Enterprise incorporates VeriFone's VeriShield Total Protect, which provides encryption and tokenization in one all-encompassing solution framework to protect data in-flight and at-rest and to isolate payment activities from device applications and storage.

With PAYware Mobile Enterprise, retailers can equip store personnel with smart mobile devices ththat feature rich graphical displays and compact form-factors for roaming checkout operations, so that items can be scanned, payment cards accepted and receipts emailed to customers or transmitted to a nearby wireless printer with ease.

VeriFone will provide customized applications, and critical management, decryption/tokenization and gateway services to enable new mobile applications such as in-store queue-busting, inventory management and out-of-store delivery and service calls. VeriFone provides managed services options including initial application load, key injection, updates, maintenance, licenses and warranty for a monthly fee.

The initial release of PAYware Mobile Enterprise is scheduled for early 2011 and VeriFone is previewing the solution at the National Retail Federation show in New York this week.

Separately, VeriFone Systems (NYSE: PAY) today announced that Beverages and more! (BevMo!), the leading alcoholic beverage-lifestyle specialty retailer in the western United States, has successfully reduced the scope of its PCI compliance requirements through the implementation of the VeriShield Protect end-to-end encryption solution.

BevMo!, which operates 50 superstores in Northern California, 47 in Southern California and 10 in Arizona, completed the deployment of VeriShield Protect chain wide in 2010, along with VeriFone's MX 860 card acceptance systems deployed at every checkout lane across the chain.

"The VeriFone VeriShield strategy gave us the freedom to re-allocate our capital spending for a 'next generation POS platform versus a compliance-oriented, and expensive upgrade' -- a positive for BevMo!," said BevMo! Chief Financial Officer Dan Carter. "In a nutshell, we were able to un-hook our POS roadmap decision from a PCI requirement-driven agenda and invest our capital on the right POS solution, on our own timeline. Quite a success achieved over a very short period of time!"

VeriShield Protect encrypts cardholder and transaction data the instant it's received - eliminating usable information before it enters POS applications or retailer networks.

"BevMo! realized it would be able to completely remove cardholder data from its servers and network, thus dramatically reducing PCI scope," said Jennifer Miles, VeriFone senior vice president - Retail, Global Security and Vertical Solutions. "BevMo! has shown great leadership in its effort to create a more secure environment for cardholders."

BevMo! considered a range of options to improve PCI compliance, including a POS software upgrade that would have cost in excess of $1 million and provided little more than incremental compliance functionality. With VeriShield Protect's format-preserving VeriShield Hidden Encryption (VHE) the retailer was able to avoid costly changes to its POS systems or back-office infrastructure.

Implementing VeriShield Protect significantly reduces enterprise systems from PCI scope, which lowers management and security costs. In addition, VeriFone's exclusive VeriShield Monitoring & Compliance System (VMCS) monitors the entire process in real time and issues security alerts as needed.