Imago Digital Wallet Bridges the Technology Gap (Dec. 17, 2012)
Dec. 17, 2012
QSecure Inc., a Los Altos, Calif.-based developer of dynamic payment card technology, has announced its digital wallet, Imago, which consists of a smartphone app to manage payment, gift and loyalty cards, and the powered ImagoCard that holds the data of those cards and can be swiped at the point of sale like any mag stripe card. After the ImagoWallet app is downloaded to an iOS, Android or Windows phone and launched, users plug the included Imago card reader into their phones and swipe the cards, up to 100, they want to store in the app.
Users then select which, if not all, cards they want to sync with the ImagoCard and program the card by laying it face down on the screen of the smartphone and pressing the Sync button. The ImagoCard reads encrypted transmissions from the screen using optical sensors. To use the ImagoCard, which has a button and small screen on the back, users press the button until the number associated with the particular card they want to use for a transaction is displayed. For example, No. 1 for the card they loaded first into the Imago App. The user then selects his loyalty card and swipes Imago, then selects credit card and swipes Imago again. Users also can receive store offers to their phones and sync those offers with their ImagoCards.
Each Imago Card only can communicate with a paired Imago app, which uses bank-level encryption to store sensitive user data in the phone and never uploads any personal user information to the “cloud,” according to the company. Imago is available for preorder at the introductory price of $59 and will begin shipping in early 2013.
“The war of the wallets is on between big players . . . but merchants and consumers are waiting to see which of these platforms will become predominant,” said QSecure CEO Mike Cummings. “Because our solution uses the phone’s display to communicate with the card, it can be used with any smartphone running our Imago App. There is no need for consumers to wait for the next generation smartphone or for merchants to change their credit card terminals to take advantage of mobile wallets.”
