Visa Sued Over SMS Alerts Service

Credit card merchant, Visa is being sued by a small US firm for allegedly infringing a patent which covers the use of SMS to alert spenders of transactions. Charge Notification Services Corporation is a relatively young company in Miami, Florida, that offers information processing services to credit card issuing banks. The C.N.S.C. patent covers charge card transaction authorization and/or notification in real-time via SMS to the cardholder's cellular phone. VISA and some of their bank partners have recently been offering this service.

"We are very sorry that it had to come to filing this suit," says Ivan Ochoa, the C.E.O. of C.N.S.C. "For months we've tried exhaustively to work with VISA with no results. We're a young company but we have experience with this product and the credit card business as a whole. We have the knowledge and infrastructure to handle even the most extreme transaction volume. We've expended considerable resources on patent registration and product development."

While at Russian Standard Bank (RSB), Daniel Davila, COO of C.N.S.C. launched a similar SMS credit card fraud protection service, resulting in an overall significant reduction of fraudulent transactions.

Posted to the site on 27th February 2009