Intel Pushes Payments Into The Internet Of Things

Ingenico and Intel have partnered to build mobile payment capabilities into a wide array of connected devices for the Internet of Things (IoT) — including intelligent vending machines, kiosks and digital signage, the companies announced at the Transact conference last week.

Under the deal, Ingenico will provide the payment acceptance capabilities, based on its long experience with point-of-sale devices. Intel’s contributions will be CPU technology, along with the Intel Data Protection Technology for Transactions system that the chipmaker unveiled last fall. That platform, formerly code-named “Baker Beach,” secures transaction data with a combination of encryption, POS device management and the ability to control which data elements go to a merchant’s own systems and what gets sent to a card processor.

The companies didn’t lay out a timeline for when things like payment-powered digital signs and vending machines will show up. But the first planned product is a mobile tablet that uses the Intel Atom processor and supports EMV and NFC payments.

“This is a great example of how innovation can simplify the purchasing experience and further enhance the merchant-consumer relationship,” Ingenico CEO Philippe Lazare said in a prepared statement. “Bringing secure payment into connected devices will root our payment acceptance expertise in the Internet of Things.”

How that will translate from buzzwords to actual payment-accepting devices isn’t clear. Right now, Intel’s transaction-protection technology detects rogue payment devices on a network by checking device IDs and serial numbers against an approved list. That means it should work with payment devices from any vendor, although Ingenico could have an inside track for using Intel’s platform to manage support for features like tokenization to its POS devices.

And while building payment-acceptance capabilities into vending machines is hardly new, although the idea of digital signs that actually accept payments and sell items to customers could be appealing to retailers, who are the ones that will ultimately decide how much IoT they want in their stores.