Through i-Accept™, acquiring banks and disruptive financial services institutions can now enable their merchants and retailers to accept contactless cards, including those from Visa®, Mastercard®, American Express® and Discover® (Elo's international partner), as well as capture financial PINs and other verification methods, without the need for additional hardware or terminals. This out-of-the-box functionality supports modern mobile and IoT connected devices and is made possible through MagicCube's next-generation security platform that's supported by all four major card networks.

Visa, a global payments leader, has seen some positive experiences resulting from the implementation of this solution in 20 countries, including Costa Rica and Peru in Latin America. "With billions of phones around the world at the ready, the opportunity that comes with lighting them up as payment acceptance devices is enormous. We want to democratize access to digital payment methods for the benefit of the industry and the digital inclusion of Brazilians. We believe this is an innovative solution that will greatly facilitate sales and cash management for small and medium entrepreneurs," said Fernando Pantaleão, VP of Merchant Solutions and Sales for Visa Brazil.

MagicCube serves progressive banks and next-generation financial institutions by offering early-adopting customers a significant advantage over the competition, including hardware-grade protection that's delivered purely through software and is easily scalable and deployable. Banks and merchants may now forgo buying and subsidizing the expensive, single-function card acceptance hardware devices, and instead deploy apps secured by MagicCube that, starting with Android, can turn any consumer device into an acceptance point.

"This solution is an important step toward the financial and digital inclusion of SMEs and we have success stories with this technology in 17 global markets, including the Latin America and Caribbean region," said João Pedro Paro Neto, President of Mastercard Brazil and GeoSouth. "In Brazil, contactless payments are growing rapidly and gaining consumer preference, which should further boost the success of innovative solutions like this. In 2020 alone, we observed almost 300% growth in transactions in this modality compared to 2019".

i-Accept™ provides end-to-end functionality, security, and modern acceptance capabilities previously limited to hardware-based terminals. The entirely software-based solution is designed with global standards like SoftPos, SpoC/PIN on Glass/PIN on Mobile, CPoC, and Tap&PIN in mind. The product offers near plug-and-play, fully contained modules that can fit into the current flows of most modern acquiring bank or merchant acceptance solutions. Powerful features, such as over-the-air upgrades, remote provisioning, risk management and mitigation, remote attestation and compliance enables i-Accept ™ to be easily integrated using simple APIs, deployed rapidly and operated easily.

"Seamless payment solutions are now essential as the demand for digital and touch-free payments continues to grow. We are pleased to integrate with MagicCube to offer merchants a broader range of contactless payments options, including SoftPOS, which is simple to deploy and quick and easy for customers to use," said Elizabeth Karl, VP, Payments Consulting, American Express.

This announcement further positions MagicCube as the leader in the Software Defined Trust (SDT) category - a new category shifting the security of mobile and IoT devices into a whole new paradigm. The company is starting multiple deployments with several leading banks, financial institutions on multiple continents, received a security compliance allowance from Visa, and recently announced strategic funding from both Visa and the Sony Innovation Fund.

"Banks, financial institutions and merchants looking for secure contactless payment solutions often see many "vendor solutions" that require shuffling the PIN keypad, additional hardware requirements, or the confusing use of two separate apps — one for PIN and another for reading the card," said Sam Shawki, CEO and co-founder of MagicCube. "It is easier for a 'next-gen' cybersecurity company such as MagicCube, to produce a comprehensive, secure product, like i-Accept, without sacrificing the user experience, than it is for a traditional payment company to secure a solution they have built in-house."

MagicCube was recently appointed to the PCI Security Standards Council Board of Advisors and was awarded the first recognition of a software-based Trusted Execution Environment (sTEE) issued by EMVCo, the global consortium which facilitates worldwide interoperability and acceptance of secure payment transactions, for its SDT platform.