Semafone, the leading provider of data security and compliance solutions for contact centres, has announced a host of new features to its award-winning and patented telephone payment solution, in response to increasing market demand for payment security and a rapidly changing regulatory landscape.

The latest version of Semafone’s solution which secures payments taken over the phone in contact centres, is now branded as Cardprotect, and will see new enterprise-level customer realise three key benefits:

1. Faster implementations, thanks to a streamlined deployment process
2. Significantly improved scalability and increased efficiency for large contacts centres, without increasing the hardware footprint
3. A payment solution which never stores personal data and is compliant with the EU GDPR, ensuring data is fully managed and handled in line with the regulations

Semafone CEO Tim Critchley said “Existing customers are already realising the benefits of being fully protected by our award-winning solution. The upgrades to Cardprotect for our new customers come at a time when companies across all industries find themselves facing increasingly complex business and data security challenges. Not only are organisations holding more and more sensitive information about their customers, but the continually changing regulatory landscape around handling, storing and processing all this data means companies need to make keeping on top of data security a key priority.

“New regulations, like the EU GDPR and Data Protection Bill, will soon be standing alongside the existing Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) requirements. All this amounts to growing pressure on companies to ensure their IT systems are up to the task of both providing data security and ensuring full compliance across their operations.”

A study by Google found that over the phone payments continue to play an important role for customers, with 61 per cent of mobile users calling a company when they come to make a purchase.

“Many predicted that the rise of ecommerce would see customers abandoning the tradition of calling up a contact centre and paying for things over the phone. But this just hasn’t happened, especially when making high-value or complex purchases,” Mr Critchley said.

“Customers want to talk to a person at the end of the phone, so they can ask for advice and get assistance when navigating the buying process. To provide this service, companies need the right security in place to support payments in the contact centre,” he said.

Along with the updates to its flagship Cardprotect solution, Semafone has imminent plans to add two new solutions to its data security offering; the release of Bankprotect and Personalprotect are on the horizon in 2018. The solutions will allow Semafone customers to also secure and verify callers’ bank account numbers and other PII, such as dates of birth, postcodes and social security numbers over the phone.