EMVCo Advisors from companies across the payments industry globally gathered in Amsterdam in March at the EMVCo Board of Advisors meeting to discuss EMVCo strategic and technical priorities. In this post, Arman Aygen, Director of Technology at EMVCo, highlights key topics covered.
1. Unified Commerce and How EMV® Technologies Work Together
Renan Renner, from EMVCo Advisor Adyen, presented on how they are helping merchants optimise the omnichannel payment experience for consumers with what they define as a unified commerce approach enabled by industry standard technologies.
“Unified commerce can be translated into three main pillars from a merchant perspective,” Renner said. “Speed, which is what the customers of our merchants are interested in – they just want to grab and go. Engagement – they want to see a personalised experience that is translated into loyalty. And convenience. Convenience always wins. Shoppers want to pay with their preferred method.”
Adyen views EMV technologies as building blocks for developing payment solutions that deliver value to merchants and the industry as a whole. “What we like about those technologies is that they have global reach, which helps us to innovate. The innovation driven by standards can lead to scalability to global businesses when there is speed involved,” Renner said.
The presentation included unified commerce use cases from the retail and hospitality sectors, highlighting how EMV technologies can be used together to support improved omnichannel payment experiences.
To support these advancements in payments, EMVCo is exploring ways to enhance EMV Specifications and related use cases. EMVCo led an interactive discussion with Advisors on how EMV Technologies can work together to enable more payment and acceptance options for merchants and provide greater security and convenience for consumers and an enhanced user experience for all. Advisors provided input on specific use cases to help explain and illustrate different ways the industry can use EMV Technologies together to deliver consistent, convenient and secure payment experiences across digital channels and devices.
2. Update on EMV 3-D Secure Testing
We can see EMV 3-D Secure’s (EMV 3DS) level of maturity with already 377 approved products on version 2.2.0. Following the publication of EMV 3DS v2.3.1 in September 2022, EMVCo has been working to update the supporting framework for testing and approval of EMV 3DS products.
At the meeting, EMVCo updated Advisors on how the testing framework is being rolled out over the course of 2023. The test plan for the latest component of v2.3.1, the Directory Server (DS) is expected to be available in June 2023. In the meantime, to support implementation of the test plan once released, EMVCo is working with vendors, platform providers and product providers via an Early Adopter Programme.
EMVCo is also developing test cases to approve the EMV 3DS Bridging Extension and expects to release these in Q3 2023. The Bridging Message Extension enables current 2.1 and 2.2 products to use selected features introduced in version 2.3.1.
More details can be found in the EMV® 3DS Approval Bulletin nº 16 under the technical resources section of the EMVCo website. Further technical discussions on EMV 3DS testing will be held at the April EMVCo Technical Meeting in Singapore.
3. EMV Secure Remote Commerce UI/UX Guidelines
As a follow-up to discussions with Associates at the May 2022 Technical Meeting in Berlin, on further harmonising the user experience and providing more educational guidance, EMVCo shared plans and gathered feedback on the creation of new EMV Secure Remote Commerce (EMV SRC) UI/UX Guidelines. EMVCo also outlined the rationale and drivers for the deliverable, along with details relating to the proposed scope.
EMVCo is developing these guidelines to support better understanding of EMV SRC, and how it can work by demonstrating the UI/UX experience. The focus will be to address specific industry feedback on current challenges related to implementing EMV SRC, including understanding consumer experience opportunities and providing consumers with a consistent checkout experience.
EMVCo’s vision is to produce UI content which directly connects with the existing SRC Specifications, but in a more dynamic, interactive format than the existing UI Guidelines, although the content is not expected to introduce any changes to the existing specifications.
EMVCo will discuss this initiative with Associates at the April EMVCo Technical Meeting in Singapore.
by Oliver Manahan
by Simon Kleine