Tyfone, a secure mobile ID and transactions solutions provider, has integrated Acculynk's real-time person-to-person money movement service, Payzur, into the Tyfone-based mobile banking iPhone and Android applications adopted by Boulder Valley Credit Union in Colorado, according to a company announcement.

Tyfone today also announced that its technology, under the brand name The Connected Smart Card, is being tested by Wisconsin-headquartered CoVantage Credit Union.

With Payzur, BVCU members can log into the app, enter their PIN and send a real-time P2P payment to any email address or mobile phone number, according to the announcement.

BVCU has been using Tyfone's mobile financial solutions since early this year, Tyfone said, and with the addition of Acculynk's real-time P2P solution, BCVU members can now send payments from their mobile devices to friends, family and others who will have immediate access to the funds.

"As mobile banking continues to evolve and see more adoption, financial institutions are finding ways to make the mobile banking experience more convenient than ever," Jason Bauer, vice president of communications/e-commerce at BVCU, said in the release. "Moreover, mobile banking levels the playing field enabling small financial institutions to compete head to head with organizations of any size, a key reason for incorporating Tyfone's next-generation banking technology to expand mobile banking options for our members. Giving members the flexibility to send money to anyone securely is a natural next step in maximizing world-class mobile banking services."

Payzur is a white-labeled P2P solution that allows a customer to send funds simply by authenticating the mobile- or Web-initiated transaction with a bank issued PIN via the PaySecure online graphical PIN pad. Since Payzur is not ACH based, the release said, there is no enrollment or waiting period for consumers to begin using the service. Payzur is fully brandable by the financial institution, and Acculynk anticipates that financial institutions will choose to private label the service, the announcement said.

"Acculynk's debit-based Payzur P2P service provides financial institutions with an inherently 'sticky' product that reinforces the financial institution's brand, encourages PIN Debit card use and provides real time money movement, which is a 'must have' for today's consumers," said Sandra Chesnutt, general manager Payzur, Acculynk. "Working with Tyfone on the inaugural in-app mobile deployment is a major milestone for Payzur. Tyfone's team is very thorough and we look forward to many more deployments with Tyfone in the future."

Tyfone said its Connected Smart Card provides unparalleled security for CoVantage Credit Union's business banking members, improving the security of members' passwords and securing all their mobile banking transactions.

Various cyber security threats put everyone at risk, the company said, with one rapidly emerging problem the threat to passwords being compromised. The inherent flaw in password systems, it added, irrespective of static password or multifactor one-time-password tokens, is when a user submits a password, the centralized cyber service has to instantly decipher system access or not.

For this request-response to work, Tyfone said, the centralized service has to store bulk information about all of the user's passwords within it and is increasingly becoming a lucrative target as computation power to hack passwords grows cheaper. According to the release, Deloitte Consulting predicts that 90 percent of user-generated passwords, even strong passwords, will be vulnerable to hacking this year. Wired magazine said 280 million passwords have been compromised in the recent months, according to the release.

Tyfone said its CSC technology is carried by each user and adds a smart card chip to any device in several convenient form factors. It enables the storage of digital certificates for a two-sided request-challenge-response to every authentication request, instead of the simple one-way request-response. This process, the company said, allows for secure point-to-point ID authentication without bulk storage of user information in the server. All user authentication information is stored with the user in CSC hardware, the company said, meaning the secure point-to-point ID authentication also results in two end-points that trust each other.

"We originally chose Tyfone as our mobile banking provider because, unlike any other vendor, their IP and know-how adds smart card based security to any device, while also supporting the emerging adoption of smart card-based EMV for payments in the U.S.," Robert Van Abel, CIO at CoVantage, said in the announcement. "We believe Tyfone's CSC solution, coupled with the work Tyfone is doing with In-Q-Tel for the U.S. government, reflects hardware that bi-directionally secures both ID and transactions will soon be essential for all entities, not just financial services. We were concerned that CoVantage would have to sacrifice either cost or aspects of security we wanted to deploy. By choosing the Tyfone CSC solution we met all our criteria for security and convenience, on top of a low total cost of ownership."

Tyfone will showcase The CSC at this week's Money2020 conference in Las Vegas.

Learn more about money transfer/P2P and security.