Breakthrough Capability Secures Mobile- and IoT-Secure Devices, Allowing Consumers’ Mobile Devices to Turn into Full-Fledged PoS Systems 

With new PCI standards set to come out at the end of the year, MagicCube, the creator of the world’s only Software Trusted Execution Environment platform (sTEE™), today introduced MC-Screen Shield™ as part of its growing product line.

MagicCube’s addition to its Shield product line paves the way for enabling displays of a regular consumer mobile device to be accepted as a PIN entry device (PED) by the payment networks.

MC-Screen Shield works in conjunction with MagicCube’s current product, MC-Token Shield™, which is gaining global adoption by innovative token service providers like Sequent and YellowPepper to secure token-based payments. MC-Token Shield is already capable of replacing the need for hardware-secure elements to build, deploy and remotely provision and manage point-of-sale systems and other IoT devices. With the addition of MC-Screen Shield, a regular consumer mobile device transforms into a full-featured point-of-sale system capable of securely accepting sensitive data, such as a payment card PIN, onto the touchscreen.

“MC-Screen Shield reliably and securely takes small merchant acceptance to a new level and tackles a physics problem that hasn’t been addressed until now,” said MagicCube CEO and Co-Founder Sam Shawki. “Instead of just adhering to minimum security requirements to pass a compliance exercise, this will address the real technological challenge of securing the man/machine interface, which is what will help achieve the industry goal of nearly doubling global card acceptance from 47 million to more than 90 million devices by 2020.”

Shawki added, “MC-Screen Shield, combined with MC-Token Shield creates a point-of-sale infrastructure that benefits consumers and merchants. We’ve long believed that the key to strengthening mobile commerce starts with acceptance at the point-of-sale, and acceptance can only increase if we move from the proprietary, legacy, hardware device model to a software model where you can download a fully-featured point-of-sale system into any off-the-shelf mobile device. It’s something we’ve been working on for years, and we’re excited about what this breakthrough means for merchants and consumers, as well as the general economic impact that comes from enabling small and medium-sized enterprises joining the digital age.”

For merchants, MagicCube addresses the new global standard for “PIN-on-Glass” or “Mobile PIN” simply by downloading software, or in some use cases by plugging in a small card reader. Merchants no longer need to invest in single-purpose proprietary and legacy point-of-sale systems.

MagicCube’s MC-Shield features include:

• Mobile screen security and protection of data entry and financial PIN with or without a Secure Card Reader (SCR)
• Secure tap-and-pay acceptance applications where a card reader is not required
• Operating system security for next-generation point-of-sale systems where MagicCube’s hardened sTEE will replace the need for expensive security chips and eliminate the headache of forking and updating entire operating systems for point-of-sale device vendors
• MagicCube’s miniCloud™ backend for visibility, remote monitoring, remote key provisioning and over-the-air upgrades for acquirers and point-of-sale device makers

The final global standard on PIN-on-Glass is expected to be published shortly and is being developed to help card brands allow more transactions through smartphone screens, thereby increasing a payment network’s transactional volumes and allowing the entire ecosystem to grow without the constraints of legacy systems.

MagicCube has been working closely with some of the largest card brands on adhering to the upcoming PIN-on-Glass standards and is participating in several upcoming trials designed to fine-tune and impact the revolutionary standard.