OREANDA-NEWS. Universe (AIM: UNG.L), a leading developer and supplier of point of sale, payment and on-line loyalty systems is pleased to announce that its subsidiary HTEC, has launched an innovative new card payment encryption solution, called "Perseus". The new proprietary solution adds an additional layer of security to card payment transactions at the point of sale and makes HTEC the first provider of point-to-point encryption ("P2PE") technology designed to be equally adept in both the petrol forecourt and traditional retail sectors.

Perseus, which has been approved and listed by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council ("PCI SSC"), complements HTEC's proven Gemini Payment Service. The Perseus P2PE solution also provides customers with improved fraud prevention and management to significantly reduce the complexities of their compliance with the PCI SSC's security standards.

Jeremy Lewis, CEO of Universe Group, said:

"We are delighted to launch this innovative, propriety encryption solution, Perseus.  It marks a first in the petrol forecourt sector and enables us to offer any customers dealing with card payment transactions significantly enhanced data security as well as cost savings as they discharge their compliance obligations.  We expect to be able to announce our first customer deployments in due course."

Universe provides some of the world's leading retailers with point of sale, payment and loyalty solutions. The Group's solutions are based on its own proprietary software and are offered out of the Cloud on a software as a service model with its data centres processing in excess of 3 billion transactions every year.

A point-to-point encryption ("P2PE") solution cryptographically protects account data from the point where a merchant accepts the payment card to the secure point of decryption. By using P2PE, payment card data is unreadable until it reaches the secure decryption environment. P2PE solutions can also reduce the scope of the cardholder data environment, which helps simplify compliance efforts with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.