Our Story
Environmentalist Turned Tech Entrepreneurs
John Killoran, Matthew Custer and Cynthia Brown started an environmental consulting firm called Clover Leaf Environmental Solutions, Inc (“Clover Leaf”) almost two decades ago and went to work using technology and innovation to eliminate pollution and create a more sustainable world…
However, in the present we did not eliminate pollution, but passwords. A remarkable journey led to eliminating required passwords forever and without the need for the user to download any app or software. All users need to register and use a secure account is an email address. Swoop In Technologies LLC (“Swoop”) patented and developed a suite of products that when released will cause passwords to be extinct, everywhere. Here is how it happened.
In 2005, Clover Leaf began using technology to solve environmental management and compliance reporting problems found everywhere in the Industry as well as within large organizations. Five years later they invented a better solution which became known as Autopilot, a patented workflow management system that automated the task management challenges that were facing the environmental compliance world in the early 2000s. Primarily through email and messaging automation, Autopilot featured an “I swear to god button” that made it easy to document and digitally record the compilation of a task and a “Get Report” feature that made it incredibly easy for managers to see how their operations were doing and whether all the tasks were up to date. Autopilot’s patented technology was recognized as foundational to many of today’s enterprise task management solutions and was acquired by Workday in 2023.
Our Shift to a Password Free World: E-commerce Payments
Around 2010, we began inventing a passwordless email based e-commerce system and launched a company called EasyBuy. It became clear that our patented AutoPilot technologies and expertise in authentication and email could be adapted to making payments and transactions easier: using email for authentication and a vehicle for transactions. The technology got its first traction in the nonprofit industry and the company was rebranded EasyGive and the world’s first payments were processed through our managed Email Payment Gateway® and being delivered to Foodbanks and Homeless Shelters as donations.
EasyGive later became Snowball Fundraising www.snowballfundraising.com and this fintech platform has been the testing ground for each iteration of Swoop’s patented technology ever since.
Throughout the Swoop patent portfolio of over 100 assets, we implemented the removal of requiring and creating passwords in order for a user to register via a “Sign Up” or “Create Account” link. Under Swoop’s YES™ brand, Swoop’s YES technologies removes user friction and wasted time in the account signup and registration process by removing the requirement for another complex unique password and user ID from the very beginning. By eliminating passwords all together, and everywhere, the extremely high costs and wasted time and resources managing password databases are also eliminated.
Expanded Payments with Swoop’s @Pay® Technologies
Starting around 2010, on the way to ultimately solving the passwordless Internet, we had some great innovations in the fields of payments and marketing transactions. We created perhaps the best way to directly pay a bill, either by a Swoop Email or even scanning a Swoop QR Code on paper bills and invoices mailed to customers. Not another link to take the user to a payment site or an app to log into, but a Swoop Embedded Link or QR Code to complete the payment – it is finished – no redirection to continue to pay a simple bill or pay for a product. We created fantastic cart abandonment technologies and patented targeted email, messaging and social media direct purchasing campaigns that Swoop calls Targeted Purchasing solutions. Targeted Purchasing provides the maximum probability for an online marketplace environment to successfully sell more products using any and all ecommerce platforms.
But perhaps our biggest breakthrough is our shift and focus on patented Swoop @Pay QR Codes that dramatically expand the opportunities to sell products and services anywhere in the world. The payment applications using @Pay are limitless and include point of sale transactions, sales through televisions, printed advertisements, anywhere you can display a Swoop QR Codes. @Pay solutions also can be used for all online, though retail store’s POS, and bills mailed to your home, and without ever having to touch anything to complete a purchase but your own phone! www.atpay.com
Extra Security for all Transactions: The Swoop PKI Platform
Our trade secrets and proprietary technology coupled with the growth of our global patent portfolio took a great leap forward when we started to fine tune and implement a patented solution for validating and authenticating users for all transactions such as payments and log ins by inventing complex technology integrating public key infrastructures with unique validation technologies and tokenization functions to create the Swoop Authentication Proprietary Protocol (SAPP) in ways that make everyday life easy for the user by removing friction, user IDs and passwords. The result is a more secure Global Authentication Network driven by the Swoop PKI Platform. By removing password completely, you eliminate 80% of all cyber and ransomware attacks as the password is by far the most vulnerable point of attack.
As a piece of our patented Swoop PKI Platform we used some authentication aspects of Domain Key Identified Mail (DKIM), Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) coupled with Swoop validation techniques to create a fully secured authentication protocol we call SAPP as illustrated below using our Doorbell technologies to login using Swoop Doorbell QC Codes: . www.doorbellpki.com
Figure 1: Fundamentals of the Swoop PKI Platform: Protected by the Swoop Patent Portfolio and proprietary trade secrets running on SAPP.
Perfecting Passwordless Authentication of Logins
The Swoop team had expanded into removing passwords forever from first time user registrations and subsequent everyday logins. Perfecting the solution for over a decade. Swoop had always known the plan was much bigger than just eliminating passwords from payments but making passwords extinct in every transaction application where they are used. This pursuit took a major step forward when we paired the Swoop PKI Platform with web socket technology and proprietary identifiers to create a seamless user login experience with nothing to download, change or manage by the user.
The first solution was the Magic Link® invention created by Swoop. We patented and trademarked the Magic Link technology that is widely used on the internet still today for OTP and other solutions. Magic Link® was one of our early successes to eliminate the usage of passwords by leveraging the fact that the ubiquitous email account is the thing that secures the password and by sending a ‘magic link’ to your email account, you can login using the URL link without a password or to reset a password.
Desktop Implementation
Smartphone Implementation
Ubiquitous QR Codes: The Final Piece of the Puzzle
Today, Swoop has implemented the ability to use patented Swoop QR Codes everywhere and it has become the primary vehicle to drive all Swoop’s suite of patented and proprietary products and solutions. Although Swoop QR Codes are not the only way, as Swoop Embedded Link are still a great feature and used in many applications; but the Swoop QR Code was our ultimate yes moment as a company. We actually invented and used Swoop QR Code technology for payments over a decade ago. Now that all smartphones come equipped with QR readers, no app is needed which was one of Swoops primary goals when eliminating passwords forever: a friction free and seamless user experience. QR Codes are everywhere and fully adopted and used by everyone. The final piece of the puzzle was in place!
Replacing Passwords with Swoop QR Codes
Success has followed everything the Team at Swoop has invented, reduced to practice or commercialized. Prior to the sale of the AutoPilot patented technologies to Workday in 2023, the entire Clover Leaf business was acquired by White Wolf Capital in a sale to focus on monetizing Swoop’s suite of patented and proprietary products and solutions create a Global Authentication Network that has put an end to outdated, vulnerable and the hated password.
We recently were looking back at this incredible journey that began in 2005 and we found “Our Manifesto” written a long time ago and thought we would provide you with a look back into time at what would seem impossible become a reality today. Swoop has succeeded through patented innovations that will lead the charge of making passwords EXTINCT and a distant memory. A paradigm shift for secure interactions with the Internet for all transactions.
Our Manifesto
Passwords suck. That’s more than just a complaint, it’s our mantra; our reason for being.
Passwords are not only the bane of every internet user, they also lead to hundreds of billions in fraud each year as well as hinder the growth of millions of websites and apps.
Swoop is poised to enhance the way we live online by changing the way we authenticate on the internet. Our technology is more secure, more useful and more private than any other authentication technology out there. We envision a world where people are able to move about the web as easily as they do the real world.
No more having to store or keep track of passwords.
No more having to give up your personal information just to log in to a website, all in the name of convenience.
No more news stories about data breaches affecting millions of people.
The internet has opened up the world in ways no one could have imagined. Anything you want to see, learn, hear, do, or buy—the internet can offer a way.
Swoop is an enabling technology that creates a better internet by providing secure, simple, smart access to everything online—making it possible to explore and use the internet the way it was meant to be, completely unburdened.
For detailed information on all our patented products and solutions please check our Technology page and/or Brands page.