History of Assured Card, 1994–1999

Timeline, 1994–1999

Each entry is dated as its source dates it, and carries a label for the kind of source behind it.

• Record stated on maynardldokken.com, the record of the founder’s ventures
• Company’s account the company’s own pages, with no other source
• Standard a published Internet standard

1. 1994

   Assured Card founded in British Columbia by Maynard L. Dokken.^⁠[1]

   Record

2. 1994

   Its purpose: to stop a missed payment from triggering escalating interest and fees.^⁠[1]

   Record

3. 1994

   Annual payments processed online in-house, “with internet enabled by 1996”.^⁠[7]

   Company’s account

4. From the start

   Enrollment on paper: forms printed, mailed, returned and processed by hand.^⁠[2]

   Record

5. 1995

   The idea of a payment terminal started at Assured Card, when the volume and cost of paper applications and payments were overwhelming the company.

   Company’s account

6. 1994 and 1996

   The open web was not yet a practical or secure channel for financial data, so a public website was not possible.^⁠[3]

   Record

7. Late 1996

   Work on the payment-terminal technology began.

   Company’s account

8. Not dated

   The closed, terminal-based system: customers installed a specially packaged Netscape browser and connected over SSL.^⁠[3]

   Record

9. 1996

   Assured Credit founded as a separate development company, to build the terminal, its install package and the gateway behind it.^⁠[4][3]

   Record

10. 1994–1999

    About 10,000 customers, by the company’s own account.^⁠[8]

    Record

11. January 1999

    TLS 1.0, the successor to SSL, published by the IETF as RFC 2246.^⁠[9]

    Standard

12. 1999

    Assured Credit’s Browser-Based Management Terminal, version 2.0: a payment terminal run entirely through a web browser.^⁠[5]

    Record

13. 1999

    The payment gateway launched, built on SSL.

    Company’s account

14. 1999

    Assured Credit’s work merged into Milinx Business Group, and Assured Card’s credit-assurance operations were drawn into Milinx.^⁠[6][1]

    Record

1994: the founding

Assured Card was founded in British Columbia in 1994 by Maynard L. Dokken, as a Canadian consumer credit and debt-payment company.^⁠[1] It was built to stop a missed payment from triggering the escalating interest and fees that fall hardest on ordinary borrowers.^⁠[1] The company’s mission, in its own words.

By the company’s own account, its annual payments were processed online in-house from 1994, “with internet enabled by 1996”.^⁠[7]

The product and the program

At the centre was a credit line that stepped in before a missed payment could trigger interest increases or credit adjustments, covering the payment so that the customer’s credit standing and rate were preserved.^⁠[10] Around it ran the 6-Step Financial Stability Program, and membership carried a $29 annual fee that referrals could waive.^⁠[10] The program, step by step.

The paper problem

Assured Card began as a paper-based operation: application and enrollment forms were printed, mailed to customers, returned, and processed by hand at the office.^⁠[2]

The company’s paper application was a legal-size, three-panel fold-out with a self-addressed return envelope on the outside. It was placed in stand-up holders at vendors.

The paper process worked, but it carried two problems.^⁠[2] The first was cost: at a $29 annual fee, printing, mailing, returning and handling paper forms made the model hard to sustain.^⁠[2] The second was security: a paper form moving through the postal system could be opened by anyone who handled it, exposing a customer’s personal and financial information, a serious information-privacy risk for a company whose purpose was protecting customers.^⁠[2] That costly, insecure enrollment is what drove the creation of a secure electronic registration system.^⁠[11]

The line into Assured Credit

This secure-enrollment and payment-processing technology, the terminal, the install package and the gateway behind it, was developed as a separate company, Assured Credit, from 1996, so that the engineering effort stood apart from the consumer business.^⁠[3] Its brief was a payment gateway and a terminal through which a payment and a credit application could be taken together over a secure connection.^⁠[4]

A payment gateway is a merchant service that authorizes card or direct payments for online and other merchants.^⁠[14] The same way in that Assured Card used, a packaged Netscape browser, reappears in Assured Credit’s merchant terminal.^⁠[7]

The technical account, from the terminal and its browser dashboard to the hosted gateway, is on assuredcredit.co: the innovations behind the payment gateway and the on-premise terminal, version 2.0.

1999

Assured Credit’s Browser-Based Management Terminal, version 2.0, dates from 1999: a full payment terminal operated entirely through a web browser, pre-installed and configured on the merchant’s own hardware.^⁠[5]

By the company’s own account, the payment gateway that grew out of this work was launched in 1999. It was built on SSL: the aim was TLS, which was not available until 1999.^⁠[9]

In the same year Assured Credit’s work merged into Milinx Business Group,^⁠[6] and Assured Card’s credit-assurance operations were drawn into Milinx.^⁠[1] By the company’s own account, Assured Card had served about 10,000 customers between 1994 and 1999.^⁠[8]

What the record does not say

• When the closed terminal system first went into service.
• When enrollment on paper ended.
• What the paper application looked like beyond the description above; no image of it has been found yet.
• The date of the 1999 gateway launch beyond the year; the launch itself is the company’s own account.
• An independent count of customers; the figure of about 10,000 is the company’s own.

Questions about Assured Card’s history