EMV® Contact Chip supports seamless and secure in-store payments and helps prevents card fraud.
EMV® Contact Chip supports seamless and secure in-store payments and helps prevents card fraud.
Chip technology validates the authenticity of a card and generates a one-time use security code for every transaction, which helps prevent counterfeit, lost and stolen fraud. The EMV Chip Specifications provide a blueprint for chip technology to work consistently anywhere in the world to deliver the same result – secure, seamless and reliable in-store payments.
EMV Contact Chip supports in-store chip card payments that require physical contact with the acceptance terminal. Consumers insert or dip their chip card into a reader to complete the transaction.
Based on the globally adopted EMV Chip Specifications, secure chips are used in over 12 billion credit and debit cards today.
EMVCo maintains the EMV Chip Specifications and supporting approval and evaluation processes.
EMV Contact Chip helps issuers and merchants improve the security of in-store payments and prevent card fraud.
Uses advanced cryptographic functions for more secure transactions than with traditional magnetic-stripe cards.
Supports the development of payment products that will work seamlessly and securely anywhere they are used for domestic and international chip-based transactions.
Enables a consistent payment experience for consumers making chip card payments, wherever they are in the world.
Flexible to support loyalty programmes, transit ticketing and other offerings not dedicated to payments.
EMV Chip technology uses advanced cryptography to generate a one-time security code (cryptogram) for each transaction that allows the card issuer and merchant point-of-sale terminal to authenticate the card. The security code is unique to each transaction and cannot be reused, which helps prevent counterfeit, lost and stolen fraud.
To execute a payment, the chip in the card or mobile device must communicate with a chip reader in an acceptance terminal. EMV Chip Specifications define the requirements for the chip and the acceptance terminal to exchange the necessary information to complete a transaction.
EMV Specifications complement industry standards that provide high level rules for compatibility by defining specifically what is needed for a seamless and secure technical interaction between the point-of-sale and payment products used by the consumer.
The EMV Chip Specifications cannot be considered in isolation, and to this end, EMVCo collaborates with multiple industry associations, standards organisations and technical bodies around the world to align related technical requirements.
The EMV Chip Specifications are based on these underlying International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) standards:
EMV Level 1 testing evaluates the terminal chip reader for compliance with the mechanical and electrical protocols in the EMV Chip Specifications, which covers the transfer of data between the terminal and the card, smartphone, watch, or other device for making card-based payments. This includes tests to confirm how close the card/device and the reader need to be for information to flow.
EMV Level 2 testing evaluates the ‘EMV Level 2 kernel’, which is the software inside the terminal (known as firmware) that performs EMV processing, for compliance with the EMV Chip Specifications. This includes tests to confirm that the software supports the EMV payment application functions.
EMV Level 3 testing evaluates and confirms that an EMV-compliant payment acceptance terminal will work with merchant or bank systems to enable end-to-end transaction acceptance. The testing helps ensure that a new or upgraded terminal (hardware and/or software) meets the specific requirements and recommendations of the individual payment systems before it is brought to market.
It is important to note that quantum computing is not expected to start posing a threat to the EMV infrastructure until at least 2040.
Harvest Now Decrypt Later, which aims to steal encrypted data today in the view that it can be decrypted and used for malicious purposes in the future, has driven a requirement in some industries and governments to deploy quantum resistant cryptography. However, this does not apply to EMV Chip transactions, as chip authentication does not require long-term data confidentiality.
Regardless, EMVCo is taking very seriously the potential threat of quantum computers undermining the security of RSA (Rivest, Shamir and Adleman) and ECC (Elliptic-Curve Cryptography) and is actively monitoring and addressing future threats.
EMVCo’s dedicated Security Working Group engages with leading quantum computing and security academics, independent consultants, and government bodies. The findings of this work are regularly shared with the EMV community at EMVCo’s Board of Advisor, Technical and User Meetings.
EMVCo has also published a position statement on ‘Quantum Computing and EMV Chip Cryptography’ that is publicly available here. It is now exploring quantum computing market requirements that are being released at a global and national level and their applicability to EMV technology.
EMVCo publishes global transaction volume data twice a year which showcases the number of contact and contactless card-present payments using EMV Chip technology during a 12-month period, broken down by region.
This document provides standards for use of the EMV Chip Terminal Acceptance Icon. The Icon is an optional symbol that can be used to indicate that an ATM or other payment terminal or device is enabled to accept EMV Chip cards.
The EMV Chip Terminal Icon is for use on an ATM or payment terminal to signal to consumers that the device accepts EMV Chip cards.
More than a hundred organisations – including merchants, issuers, acquirers, payment networks, financial institutions, manufacturers, technology providers and testing laboratories – contribute their knowledge and expertise to the development of EMV Specifications.
EMVCo Associates can contribute their knowledge and expertise to shape the development of EMV Specifications.
EMVCo Subscribers can receive notice of pending EMV Specification developments and participate in a formal dialogue with EMVCo.
All industry participants can review and provide comments on new EMV Specifications and major updates before final publication.
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