The mPOS system provider Infinite Peripherals has formed a partnership with Mercury Payment Systems, a payment service provider for small to mid-sized businesses. As part of the agreement, IPC has securely integrated its mPOS technology with Mercury's payment processing platform, MercuryPay. This means Mercury is able to supply IPC products with encrypted magnetic-stripe card readers such as the Linea Pro and Infinea Tab to its dealers and developers for their merchant clients.

The Linea Pro and Infinea Tab are mPOS solutions for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. They comprise custom mPOS software, an encrypted MSR, barcode scanner, RFID and Bluetooth chip, along with inventory management, asset tracking, ID verification and lead tracking.

IPC said the Linea Pro and Infinea Tab are the first mobile iOS-based solutions to have earned PCI PTS 3.1 SRED (Payment Card Industry PIN Transaction Security 3.1 Secure Reading and Exchange of Data) approval. According to the company, its mPOS systems play an important role in a merchant's compliance with the PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) and can lead to potential adoption of a validated point-to-point encryption solution.

To facilitate the Mercury-IPC integration, IPC collaborated with JR's POS Depot, Mercury's third-party key injection facility in Sunrise, Fla., to arrange encryption services for its mPOS technology. JR's POS Depot's KIF is TG-3-certified and adheres to Visa USA encryption and ESO (encryption support organization) standards. TG-3 is a PIN encryption standard.

JR's POS Depot injects the Mercury encryption key into the Linea Pro or Infinea Tab's encrypted MSR on the IPC device at JR's facility, thereby enabling the MSR track data to be encrypted directly at the point of swipe for greater security. Data remains encrypted all the way to Mercury's secure servers, which offers peace of mind and helps minimize risks for both merchants and customers, the companies said.

This month, IPC launched the Infinea BluePad, a Bluetooth-enabled mPOS peripheral device for EMV and magnetic-stripe cards that is compatible with iOS-based and Android (OS 2.1 or higher) phones.

Learn more about mobile POS.