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In this EMV® Insights post, Oliver Manahan, EMVCo Director of Engagement and Operations, summarises the key discussions from the Hanoi Board of Advisors Meeting.
Vietnam has rapidly transitioned from a predominantly cash-based economy into one of Asia’s most dynamic digital payment ecosystems – recording 17.7 billion cashless transactions in 2024, up +56% year on year.[1] Thuy Vu from VNPAY explained how the EMV Specifications provide the “technical backbone enabling secure, scalable [card] payments across Vietnam’s growing financial ecosystem”, and outlined how advances in agentic AI and digital identity technologies are now reshaping commerce across the country.
This set the stage for a series of strategic discussions which explored trends, challenges and opportunities across the global payments landscape:
What’s Next for EMV® Agentic Payments?
In August, EMVCo published the draft EMV® Agentic Payments – Framework for Specifications for public review. The framework was released publicly with the aim of providing a foundation for further industry engagement and to help inform the development of any future potential specifications.
The response was significant. Hundreds of comments were submitted during the public review period across a broad range of topics. This strategic input from Advisors will help guide how EMVCo’s Agentic Payment Task Force addresses this feedback.
Advisors also provided strategic guidance on future priorities, including how Know Your Agent (KYA) capabilities and interoperable indicators can support the consistent identification of agentic transactions across the payments ecosystem.
These discussions were complemented by a wide-ranging and in-depth expert agentic payments panel moderated by EMVCo’s Director of Engagement and Operations Oliver Manahan and featuring Clinton Allen, Chair of EMVCo’s Agentic Payments Task Force, Gautam Poornachandra (Amazon), Jason Rosenbaum (Australian Payments Plus), Glenn Cubitt (Commonwealth Bank of Australia) and John Drechny (Merchant Advisory Group).
Continuing to Define a Digital Payment Credential
Work on the EMV® Digital Payment Credential is also making good progress. EMVCo first released the EMV Digital Payment Credential Specification – Schema Framework for initial public review in July 2026. The schema defines the data that a credential contains and how it is structured to support secure, privacy-preserving and scalable authentication for card-based payments.
To shape ongoing work on the schema, along with the potential to also support payment initiation use-cases, EMVCo Advisors shared their feedback during an interactive session on the broader industry direction for Digital Payment Credentials – including emerging use cases, ecosystem opportunities, and considerations.
Evolving EMV 3-D Secure and EMV Secure Remote Commerce
Advisor feedback is also informing EMVCo’s ongoing efforts to evolve the EMV 3-D Secure (3DS) and EMV Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) Specifications. The draft EMV® 3-D Secure (3DS) Protocol and Core Functions Specification Version 2.4 has now been published for Associate and Subscriber review, outlining a specification structure and delivery process that helps to simplify solution development and deployment, while optimising testing.
EMVCo has also published Version 1.6 of the EMV® Secure Remote Commerce Specifications. This latest version includes new data elements to support road tolling use cases. It also enables merchants to create multiple payloads during a single transaction to promote flexible payment experiences. Attention is now turning to how the EMV SRC Specifications can evolve to foster continued innovation as more use cases arise. As such, EMVCo is examining the opportunity to simplify the use of the EMV SRC Specifications to aid industry understanding.
Facilitating Industry Collaboration
Bringing Advisors together in Hanoi highlighted the value of industry collaboration in action, with experts sharing knowledge, exchanging perspectives and contributing to the strategic direction of EMVCo.
The conversation continues in Vancouver this week at the EMVCo Technical Meeting. Sessions will dive deeper into the EMV Technologies enabling digital commerce. They will also cover the latest EMV Chip developments, including testing and approval enhancements and updates on EMV Security and Security Evaluations.
Join the conversation in 2027
As we approach the end of the year, here are the meetings that EMVCo will be hosting in 2027, which will continue these discussions with participants from across the EMV community:
- 2-3 March 2027 – Board of Advisors Meeting in Miami
- 12-15 April 2027 – Technical Meeting in Budapest
- June 2027 (Exact dates TBC) – Virtual EMV User Meeting
- 28-29 September 2027 – Board of Advisors Meeting in Seoul
- 15-18 November 2027 – Technical Meeting in Denver
[1] https://www.terrapay.com/media/terrapay-tpbank-real-time-cross-border-payments-vietnam/
by Clinton Allen