Payments infrastructure company Stripe has acquired Irish startup Touchtech Payments, which develops authentication technology that is compliant with strong customer authentication (SCA).
Image: Touchtech Payments acquired by Stripe. Photo: Courtesy of Steve Buissinne/Pixabay.
According to Touchtech Payments, it focuses on making it easier for banks to provide a better authentication experience for customers. The company’s technology is claimed to be used across Europe by startups and challenger banks such as N26 and Transferwise, to enable frictionless and secure authentication on mobile and desktop.
On September 14, 2019, SCA will come into force in Europe and is expected to change the way people buy and sell online. Over 300 million European consumers will need to confirm their identity, either by a password or a fingerprint, for online purchases.
Thousands of European online merchants, including retailers and ridesharing companies, will be required to upgrade their payments set-up to prepare for the regulation. Their transactions will be declined outright, if they do not follow SCA.
Stripe chief product officer Will Gaybrick said: “On the modern internet, payments should be everything you’d expect: easy, secure, and fully compliant with the latest regulations. Unfortunately, these three attributes are often at odds with one another, making it nearly impossible for an individual business to keep pace with regulatory changes and build a great payments product experience for their customers.
“Touchtech adds yet another layer to the economic infrastructure Stripe is building for the internet, which is designed to help businesses comply not only with SCA but also with the entire next generation of regional payment regulations.”
Touchtech Payments has announced new products and updates to help merchants implement SCA-ready authentication methods to their checkout page and dynamically trigger SCA when needed.
The Payment Intents API lets businesses design their SCA-ready payment forms and accept best authentication methods such as 3D Secure 2, Apple Pay and Google Pay through a single integration.
Stripe said that when new authentication requirements arise, it will update its logic to protect merchants’ revenue, where hardly any change will be needed in their integration.