Erricsson Offers up Cell Phone Location info to Protect Banks from Credit Card Fraud

Ericsson’s IPX Country Lookup is a service that determines the location of a users phone to confirm the person is in the country where a credit card purchase is to be carried out. For the system to work:

- the bank must subscribe to the service it
- the carrier must have the Ericsson software on its network
- the user must turn on the phone at least once when in country
- GSM phones only

The user’s exact location is not determined, just the country, and after that information is used, it’s purged (though we know that’s tough to do).

Ericsson pays the carrier a small fee for the location lookup. Ericsson will put a margin on that look up fee and charge it to the bank.

Sure sounds complex to get it all the stars aligned…but we’ll see.

- PC World