In this EMV® Insights post, Oliver Manahan, EMVCo Director of Engagement and Operations, summarises the key discussions from the first Board of Advisors Meeting of 2026.
With global travel disruption preventing us from gathering in-person in Istanbul, I would like to thank all EMVCo Advisors and participants for their understanding and flexibility to enable discussions to proceed virtually.
The meeting was kicked off by Celal Cündoğlu from Sipay, who provided an overview of the payments landscape in Turkey and highlighted the role EMV® Specifications have played in enabling innovation. This set the scene for a series of business discussions on the key industry developments and opportunities shaping EMV technology:
Defining an approach to agentic payments
In recognition of the new and unique considerations presented by growing momentum for agentic commerce, EMVCo confirmed in November 2025 that it is working on how global specifications can support innovation in card-based agentic payment solutions by increasing trust and interoperability across the ecosystem.
An Agentic Payments Task Force has now been established to define and develop EMVCo’s approach, examining scenarios in which consumers authorise artificial intelligence (AI) agents to use card payments for purchases on their behalf. Initial focus areas include analysing card-based agentic payment use-cases and considerations – such as consumer intent, trust in agent-initiated transactions and privacy-preserving interaction models.
The Task Force will also coordinate across EMVCo to evaluate how EMV 3-D Secure (3DS), EMV Payment Tokenisation, EMV Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) and digital identity technologies can best support agentic payments, as well as engaging with other technical bodies, industry groups and ecosystem participants.
Developing a Digital Payment Credential
In recent years, the concept of verifiable digital credentials (VDCs) has proliferated across digital identity ecosystems. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines VDCs as:
“A cryptographically verifiable, digital representation of a credential or attributes secured in a dedicated application, often referred to as a digital wallet. VDCs come in many forms including government credentials (e.g. driver’s licenses), education credentials (e.g. diplomas), proof of coverage such as health insurance, or proof of certain personal characteristics or attributes (e.g. age over 21). VDCs can be presented both online and in-person.” [1]
Importantly, the structure of VDCs varies according to the specific use case and application. To proactively address the risk of fragmentation if various proprietary approaches are taken for payment cards, EMVCo is leveraging its proven experience in promoting global interoperability to define a Digital Payment Credential (DPC) that represents a payment-specific application of VDCs.
A DPC aims to establish a common, interoperable way of using VDCs in remote card-based payment scenarios. This work is initially focused on defining the data that a credential contains and how it is structured – known as a ‘schema’ – to support secure, privacy-preserving and scalable payment authentication for card-based payments.
Following the release of the draft DPC Schema Framework for Associate review and discussion with Advisors, EMVCo is continuing to work closely with participants and partners – such as the FIDO Payments Working Group and the WE BUILD Consortium – to advance this initiative. This includes an investigation of new functionality to enable payment initiation.
Evolving the EMV SRC Specifications to support new digital payment experiences
New use cases for EMV SRC technology are emerging that broaden the applications beyond e-commerce, with electric vehicle (EV) charging as a leading example. Following extensive industry engagement and feedback, Version 1.0 of the EV Open Payments Use Case document has now been published, outlining how EMV SRC can be used to integrate card-based open payments at EV charging stations supporting ISO 15118 Plug and Charge.
With other use cases such as agentic payments and road tolling under active consideration, EMVCo Advisors discussed opportunities to evolve the EMV SRC Specifications to simplify their use and aid industry understanding to promote continued innovation.
Enhancing browser-based out-of-band authentication in EMV 3DS
Advisors also received an update on ongoing work to enhance the EMV 3DS Specification structure and delivery process to simplify solution development and deployment, while optimising testing.
In addition, EMVCo has been working with the industry to provide recommendations to help improve the user experience and approval rate when a key EMV 3DS Specification feature – out-of-band (OOB) authentication – is used in browser-based transactions. All merchants and issuers are strongly encouraged to view the full recommendations and sequence diagrams within the EMV 3DS White Paper, which is available in an interactive online format. An Associate presentation by Dr. Thomas Fromherz from G+D Netcetera also outlined user experience and interface considerations that can enhance the OOB authentication experience.
Join us in Singapore for the EMVCo Technical Meeting
In-person meetings will resume later this month as we head to Singapore for the EMVCo Technical Meeting, which takes place from 14-16 April. We look forward to continuing the discussions on agentic payments, DPC, EMV SRC and EMV 3DS, as well as exploring EMVCo’s work to:
- Update the Payment Account Reference (PAR) data element within the EMV Payment Tokenisation – Technical Framework to support increased adoption across the ecosystem
- Identify the considerations posed by wireless payments
- Evolve Approval and Evaluation processes to address industry developments
This will be followed by our annual EMV User Meeting, which takes place from 9-10 June in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. If you are planning on attending to explore the trends and technologies shaping card payments with industry peers, you can benefit from early bird pricing until 15 April.
[1] NIST, Digital Identities: Getting to Know the Verifiable Digital Credential Ecosystem, November 2024
