Credit card data goes on-line

Cardlink Services has become the first organisation in Australia to utilise the data storage and retrieval capabilities of the Australian-developed Kodak Digital Science Library Services, launched in Sydney recently.

Kodak's Library Services will provide Cardlink and its bank customers with a centralised repository of digitised credit card vouchers, allowing the exchange of images between participating banks.

Cardlink is a service provider to most of the country's major banks providing data entry and voice authorisation services for Bankcard, Mastercard and Visa transactions.

Cardlink will store large volumes of digitised images of credit card vouchers and other credit card data on Kodak System 2000 Optical Disk jukeboxes, which are each capable of storing up to 1.5 terabytes of data. The jukeboxes are located at another site and are maintained by Kodak.

Strict security measures have been implemented to ensure that all information about the content and context of each voucher image is known only by the originating bank and Cardlink. Comprehensive physical, system and communication security measures surround Kodak Digital Science Library Services to cover all aspects of its operation.

"Our customers make thousands of voucher inquiries and retrievals each day from the 60 million voucher images stored annually.

"Kodak's Library Services will allow participating banks to share vouchers without having to lodge requests which require significant volumes of paperwork, staff time and expense," said Ted Wastie, chief executive of Cardlink Services. "Banks will be able to offer a far more efficient service to customers by providing them with access to a digital image of a credit card voucher within seconds without having to locate a paper copy or search through microfilm," he said.

"Currently, all banks microfilm their customers' credit card vouchers, either utilising this service through Cardlink or performing the task in-house," explained Mr Wastie.

"A manual search of the microfilm must then be performed to locate the voucher and it may take days for an enquiry to be satisfied.

"Kodak's solution makes this credit card information directly available to all participating banks without the need to undertake a manual process," he said.

According to Joe Fusca, manager of Library Services for Kodak's Business Imaging Systems Division in Australia, a major benefit for subscribers is the elimination of the need for customers to invest in costly capital equipment required for mass information storage and retrieval.

"Library Services is provided via a third-party, on a pay-as-you-go basis providing image enablement for new and existing systems easily and cost effectively," said Mr Fusca.

"The system has been designed to make bank implementation as simple as possible by delivering images via standard World Wide Web protocols to their in-house systems.

"This format is well understood by the end-users who can integrate the images into existing applications or view them with something as simple as an Internet browser," he said.