EMVCo Advisors from companies across the global payments industry gathered in Indonesia last month at the EMVCo Board of Advisors meeting to discuss EMVCo strategic and technical priorities.
1. EMV® support for omnichannel payments
An ongoing priority for EMVCo is supporting the delivery of secure, quick and convenient checkout experiences, no matter how consumers choose to pay. As consumer shopping preferences diversify, EMVCo faces the challenge of supporting a seamless transaction experience across multiple channels. Traditionally called omnichannel, we discussed the creation of a unified experience by integrating payment across all channels.
Today, EMVCo essentially supports the payment experience across channels in the following ways:
- The EMV Contact Chip, Contactless Chip, Mobile and QR Code Specifications are used by payments stakeholders to develop products and services that deliver trusted and convenient in-store payments.
- The EMV Secure Remote Commerce (SRC), 3-D Secure (3DS) and Payment Tokenisation Specifications support global adoption of fraud-fighting technologies for reliable and convenient online transactions.
- The EMV 3DS Specification enables authentication in line with the Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements as described in the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2).
At the meeting, the Merchant Advisory Group provided perspectives on the evolution of omnichannel payments. In particular, this discussion highlighted merchants’ needs post pandemic, as they face global staff shortages. As the importance of omnichannel grows, EMVCo will continue to investigate opportunities to enhance the EMVCo specifications in line with evolving expectations, for both merchants and their customers, and the wider payments industry.
2. What’s next for the EMV Contactless Kernel Specification?
In October, following approval from the Board of Advisors, EMVCo published the EMV Contactless Kernel Specification to meet industry demand for an EMV contactless kernel that can be used by all stakeholders globally for seamless and secure contactless acceptance.
The Board of Advisors discussed next steps on the testing programme to support the specification, which is being jointly led by EMVCo’s Terminal Approval Working Group and its Level 3 Testing Group. While timing is still to be finalised, it’s anticipated that test tools will be available for development and debugging in the first half of 2023, with the full testing suite to follow in 2024.
Further technical discussions on the specification, and testing will be held at the EMVCo Technical Meeting, in Austin in the US in November.
3. Supporting flexible and secure checkout options
As global e-commerce soars and with consumers and merchants increasingly expecting faster, simpler ways to pay online, another topic which was of high interest at the meeting was the latest updates on EMV SRC, Click to Pay. Following input from EMVCo Associates, version 1.3 of the EMV SRC Specifications is due to be published before the end of the year. To learn more about the latest updates, keep an eye on the EMVCo website.
by Oliver Manahan