Miri Systems, a privately owned developer of the Miri Card designed to allow credit card users make secure transactions online by providing a unique number for each purchase recently spoke to murdok about its technology.
According to the company, in 2007, there was a total of $3.2 billion in total credit card fraud in the U.S., with $1.9 billion taking place online. Because of online fraud Miri Systems believes that its credit card technology will become as standard as traditional static cards are currently.
When asked about the possibility of hackers breaching the Miri Card the company said,” Eventually, hackers will figure out everything. But, the idea is staying ahead. With Miri, each encoding algorithm is unique to the cardholder and the only way to compromise the Miri card is to steal the encoding device.”
“If the device is stolen, the encoding algorithm can immediately be changed. So the hacker can’t land the card holder’s actual number. Consequently, there is little incentive for the hacker to try to hack it.”
On the issue of other major security banking breaches occurring online the company said,” For the most part, financial institutions won’t reveal the breaches essentially because they don’t have a real solution. As long as the static credit card number is used in purchase transactions, we will see more breaches.”
“The problem is the technology: the magnetic strip on the back of the card is a decades old technology. Actually, the magnetic strip facilitates fraud but is not the primary cause of fraud.”
Miri says it believes widespread adoption of this type of technology will happen soon. It said it is currently in talks with major bank issuers and a major credit card company to offer its credit card technology.
Currently its technology is available for Internet and telephone transactions. The company says it expects that cell phone use at the point of sale will be the next step in development.