With many of VBO Tickets customers being higher education institutions, VBO Tickets is consistently looking to offer improved services to colleges and universities. Security has been a top priority for higher education institutions over the last few years. The number of payment interactions on college campuses is staggering. In person and online payments introduce significant risk to an institution. When choosing a payment provider, these colleges and universities prioritize security and compliance.
VBO Tickets is delivering for our higher education customers by choosing to work with payment experts in the Higher Education space that will provide solutions tailored to the unique needs of colleges and universities. Thanks to something called “EMV technology,” colleges and universities are increasingly transitioning to more secure credit card and payment solutions. Mag-stripe card purchases might be simple and straightforward, but they’re also vulnerable to fraud. This is because whatever information is embedded in the mag stripe stays in the mag stripe—and always stays the same for every transaction. And that means that any criminal who’s able to successfully clone your mag-stripe data onto another card can use this information over and over again until you end up going through the trouble of getting replacement cards. Along with the futuristic look that EMV chip cards add to any blasé black-striped credit card, they also come with higher-tech security—and EMV compliance regulations that all businesses eventually must follow to support it.
Recently VBO Tickets partnered with Bluefin Payment Systems to expand on our EMV chip card solutions and integrate with Bluefin’s industry leading PCI-validated P2PE solution. Bluefin is a leader in supporting EMV chip cards, along with offering a wide selection of card reader equipment to read the cards. Bluefins PCI-validated P2PE solutions secure credit and debit card transactions by encrypting all data within a PCI-approved point-of-entry device, preventing clear-text cardholder data from being available in the device or the merchant’s system where it could be exposed to malware. This partnership delivers on VBO Tickets’ commitment to colleges and universities to provide the best payment security, by partnering with Bluefin Payment systems, the recognized integrated payments leader in encryption and tokenization technologies.
The Evolution of Credit Card Security
In the early days of credit cards, merchants had to hand write the customer account information, later they started using small imprinting machines to carbon transfer the credit card information. In those days, how could the merchant tell whether the card was stolen, or over the limit? They couldn’t. Eventually the arrival of the magnetic stripe changed all that, offering better security and real time authorization.
However, finally the magnetic stripe credit card is reaching its expiration date with Mastercard becoming the first payments network to phase it out. Newly issued Mastercard credit and debit cards will not be required to have a magnetic strip starting in 2024 in most markets. Instead the cards will transition to the EMV chip cards. By 2033, no Mastercard credit or debit cards will have magnetic stripes. Are you ready?
The shift away from magnetic stripe points to the need for better security and the continuing evolution of the credit card. Today’s EMV chip cards are powered by microprocessors that are much more capable and secure. By choosing to partner with Bluefin, VBO Tickets enhances our support of EMV chip technology, while offering our higher education customers the best payment security.
Bluefin, is the newest addition to the payment gateways that VBO Tickets works with, along with Authorize.Net, Paypal Pay Flow Pro, 360 Payments, and Stripe.
Bluefin is widely requested and adopted by colleges and universities in the US, and it has the following benefits.
Offers Online and Chip+Pin
Bluefin is the first payment gateway for VBO Tickets that enable you to accept chip+pin credit cards both online and in the box office. As more people start using chip+pin credit cards, this will become all the more important and necessary to connect with your patrons.
Same Day Partial Refunds
Bluefin supports same day partial refunds, similar to paypal, which is not offered on a number of other payment gateways. With this knowledge, your patrons will feel more at ease when purchasing tickets.
Supports Multiple Devices
Bluefin supports the chip & pin device PAX A80, which can easily be integrated with VBO Tickets’ Mobile Event Manager app; for iOS and Android.
Ease of Setup & Integration with VBO Tickets’ Event Manager App
Now, you might think that using an entirely new gateway is too difficult. However, you’d be surprised at how easy it is to set up Bluefin with three simple steps:
- Get your public and private API key from Bluefin.
- Add Bluefin as your payment gateway and input your API keys to VBO Tickets.
- Register your terminals with VBO.
The Bottom Line
The moral of the story? VBO Tickets is focused on offering the best payment security available to colleges and universities. With VBO Tickets’ integration with Bluefin you can find a solution that works for your campus or business, no matter your size or industry—especially since transitioning to EMV payment technology to meet credit card chip reader standards is a step most businesses should have already taken by now.
