PRINCETON JUNCTION, N.J., Feb. 10, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- More than 600 executives gathered in Salt Lake City last week at the Smart Card Alliance Payments Summit to share insights and collaborate on making 2015 a successful year in implementing new, secure and convenient ways to pay with EMV chip cards and mobile devices in retail and transit.
The Summit kicked off with keynote presentations and panels featuring executives from American Express, Discover, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, First Annapolis, MasterCard, Vantiv, Visa and more. For a recap of the news from the opening day of the Payments Summit, visit http://bit.ly/1zFAVf7 .
As the Payments Summit moved into its second and third days, discussions went deeper into the business and implementation considerations for transit, EMV chip and mobile payment and authentication technologies emerging in the U.S.
Public transportation and contactless and mobile payment
The presenters representing public transit agencies talked about their requirements for next generation fare collection systems said that open and mobile payment acceptance are part of their plans.
With 27 million transactions every day, public transit has the potential to help drive contactless card and mobile payment acceptance in the U.S., but the transit industry also has unique requirements that must be met in order to seize that opportunity, said Michael DeVitto of the New York MTA. The number one need is the issuance of debit, credit and prepaid bank cards with contactless chips. "Contact chips won't work for transit," said DeVitto, and given the risk and liability issues, without significant contactless issuance it is "likely" many transit agencies will fall back to issuing their own managed media, "and we would all lose out on this conversion opportunity."
Oliver Manahan of MasterCard pointed out that the EMV chip migration is the perfect time for U.S. merchants to turn on contactless payment. The fact that contactless-ready devices are being installed and not turned on is "just a massive head scratcher," he said. He also reminded attendees that if a merchant enables both contactless and contact, it relieves the PCI audit requirement. For its part, MasterCard has a large base of contactless cards in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and New York City that merchants need to consider, Manahan said.
Karen Czack said Americans Express is very supportive of contactless payments and pointed to Transport for London (TfL) as an example of what can be achieved when you get it right. TfL has experienced 30.6 million transit journeys paid for via bank-issued contactless cards in 2014, have seen cards from 57 countries, and sees 1.2 million contactless transactions and 100,000 new cards in a typical week.
Chip acceptance experiences for merchants, ATM and petroleum
Virtually every presenter discussing EMV chip acceptance readiness included a common recommendation—get started now, because it's going to take longer than you think to develop, certify and implement chip technology.
Mitzie Waters of Bank of America Merchant Services said that their merchant customers who are early adopters of chip are largely going ahead and completing their certification for credit only and will add debit as the second step. She said that they will be ready for debit certification in the next couple of months, so customers that are planning to start chip certification efforts then will be in a better position to implement credit and debit acceptance capabilities at the same time.
On the subject of migrating ATMs to chip, Deborah Spidle of Paragon Application Services told attendees that, fortunately, the vast majority of ATMs in the country can be upgraded by changing the chip reader and the application kernel.
Spidle reported that mostly all of the major financial institutions have enabled their ATMs for chip acceptance in large cities with a lot of international travelers like New York City, Miami and Orlando, but smaller banks and credit unions are not nearly so far along. Spidle also cited a recent survey from ATM Industry Association (ATMIA), which said that 61 percent of all ATM operators anticipate that the vast majority of their ATMs will be capable of handling chip transactions by the end of 2016.
Citgo Petroleum Company's Kara Gunderson, who also co-chairs the EMV Migration Forum's Petroleum Special Interest Group, reviewed the challenges facing that industry as it upgrades its 150,000 locations to accept chip cards. She said they will go through the chip upgrade twice, once for inside the store in 2015 and a second time for pay-at-the-pump in 2017. "We're going to struggle as an industry to meet that Oct. 1, 2015 deadline," she said, citing the number of different combinations of fuel dispensers, firmware and legacy point of sale (POS) systems within the industry and the unique transactions and payment types their stores are required to accept.
Mobile specifications and standards update
EMVCo's Brian Byrne reported that EMVCo is working on phase two of its Contactless Mobile Payment (CMP) Product Type Approval process, which tests mobile devices for compliance with the EMV specification. EMVCo is also working on a new specification for 3D Secure, which allows cardholders to authenticate themselves during online payments. A draft specification is expected at the end of 2015, Byrne said.
Troy Leach of the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) said that PCI SSC is working on mobile research. He said that the PCI SSC is planning on forming a task force to look at the security and efficacy of entering PINs on mobile devices, as well as alternative authentication methods on mobile devices.
Michael Poitner, NXP Semiconductors gave attendees an update on the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) specification, which aims to eliminate weak username and password authentication. The FIDO specification has two elements – universal authentication framework (UAF) and universal second factor (U2F). UAF allows users to use a biometric – fingerprint, voiceprint, face recognition – that authenticates them to their devices. PayPal has rolled this out on the Samsung Galaxy, Poitner said.
U2F is a small dongle that can be inserted into a USB port to provide a secure second factor of authentication. Poitner noted that Google has added U2F second factor for multi-factor authentication and that FIDO will support Bluetooth, near field communications (NFC) and LTE wireless technologies in the coming months.
Payments Summit 2016 – new location
At the meeting, Smart Card Alliance Executive Director Randy Vanderhoof announced that the Payments Summit will move to Orlando in 2016, with the event scheduled for April 5-7, 2016. More details will be available soon.
For more information on the Smart Card Alliance, visit http://www.smartcardalliance.org .
About the Smart Card Alliance
The Smart Card Alliance is a not-for-profit, multi-industry association working to stimulate the understanding, adoption, use and widespread application of smart card technology.
Through specific projects such as education programs, market research, advocacy, industry relations and open forums, the Alliance keeps its members connected to industry leaders and innovative thought. The Alliance is the single industry voice for smart cards, leading industry discussion on the impact and value of smart cards in the U.S. and Latin America. For more information please visit http://www.smartcardalliance.org .
Megan Shamas Montner Tech PR 203-226-9290
