Quantcast StorefrontBacktalk » Blog Archive » Shell Oil Backs Visa’s Partial Payment Service
advertisement
advertisement

Shell Oil Backs Visa’s Partial Payment Service

Written by Evan Schuman
August 23rd, 2007
Like this story? Share it
To share this story with people in your social network, please click on the network icons below.

Visa’s partial authorization pre-paid approach got a huge boost on Thursday, with Shell Oil and its 6,000 gas stations (I wanted to say “service stations” but who are we kidding?) publicly committing to the service.

The partial payment tactic is designed for customers making a purchase that is larger than the dollars remaining on that card. Traditionally, such a payment is rejected, potentially losing the sale.

With Visa’s partial approach and Shell, the gas pumps would be programmed to only dispense as much product as the customer has on the card. (They’ve automated the old Vaudeville sales joke. “How much is it?” “Depends. How much do you have in your wallet?”) This doesn’t work for all products, but it should work well with gasoline sales.


advertisement

Leave a Reply

Newsletter

Quickly catch-up on the latest in E-Commerce and Retail Tech with our free weekly newsletter, with urgent bulletins as news merits.
advertisement

Most Recent Comments

Kill All The Passwords

This article does mention, but does not give enough attention to, the fact that the attacks discussed are only feasible when the encrypted password file can be copied and subjected to an offline attack. The trick is to have authentication performed on a separate, much more strongly secured host - such as an Active Directory Domain Controller, or a Kerberos server, or a NIS+ server, or even using something as banal as an LDAP-over-SSL authentication dialog. In these environments, the odds of the "password file" being stolen and subjected to an offline attack go to near zero, and only online attacks may be carried out by the attacker. With sensible exponential backoff between failed password attempts, lockout after a modest number of failed attempts on a single account, and pattern detection, that minimum 7 character password is quite secure enough. Passwords aren't dead yet for security purposes, and they will be with us for a very long while to come for practical purposes. The trick is to employ them correctly. Read more...
The possibilities you describe are years away from being implemented at best, so for the moment passwords are an ugly reality. Luckily, password managers can easily manage hundreds of passwords of any length. The only thing a user needs to remember is the master password. It seems like an easier task to educate users on how to use password managers rather than implement complex security technology on a global basis. Read more...