In October, EMVCo Advisors met at the EMVCo Board of Advisors Meeting in Nashville to engage in the strategic direction of EMVCo and discuss payments industry challenges and opportunities with other stakeholders. A key focus of the event was industry collaboration, with two guest speakers and four EMVCo Associates giving presentations on topics relevant to the payments industry. In this post, Oliver Manahan, Director of Engagement and Operations at EMVCo, summarises the key topics and discussions.
1. Exploring open payments for electric vehicle charging
In September, EMVCo announced that it had formed an Electric Vehicle Open Payments Task Force and was working with various industry stakeholders to explore how EMV® payment technology could help support a secure and seamless electric vehicle (EV) charging payment experience.
Discussions in Nashville centred on the challenges facing the EV charging ecosystem, the potential for open payments and the scope of EMVCo’s work in this area. EMVCo’s engagement with CharIN – and other industry bodies such as the Secure Technology Alliance – to examine opportunities for integrating EMV Specifications with existing EV charging standards and protocols to support interoperable, open payments was also discussed.
Further to this engagement, EMVCo was pleased to welcome Erika Myers, Executive Director for CharIN North America, to explore how CharIN is empowering the next level of e-mobility and its work to promote standards for EV charging systems around the world. Erika also gave insight into the ISO 15118 ‘Plug & Charge’ Standard and the importance of developing a solution that is adopted by all relevant players.
2. Towards a seamless TapToMobile user experience
TapToMobile allows merchants to accept contactless payments directly on NFC-enabled consumer mobile devices (such as smartphones phones or tablets) and enterprise devices (such as the handheld devices used by a server to take an order, accept a payment and generate a receipt) with no need for an additional connected device, dongle or attachment. At the meeting, EMVCo gave an update on its TapToMobile initiative, which aims to enable a good experience when these devices are used for contactless payment acceptance.
A key finding of EMVCo’s TapToMobile Early Adopter Programme was that the quality of the TapToMobile user experience is mainly dependent on NFC ‘read ranges’, which refers to how close the payment device needs to be to the acceptance device for payment information to flow. While traditional terminals have a high read range (up to 4cm), consumer and enterprise devices – which were not designed with payments as the intended primary function – have a more limited range.
To address this, EMVCo is exploring the introduction of minimum acceptance criteria and a supporting approval process for ‘mobile’ devices – in addition to the existing process for traditional payment devices – that defines three levels of user experience with different requirements relating to read range and positioning as outlined within the EMV Contactless Interface Specification. The introduction of two new Reduced Range Approval Processes will allow EMVCo and the industry to start measuring the performance of these devices and provide feedback on how to improve their read range over time.
EMVCo will continue to work closely with industry partners such as NFC Forum and PCI SSC to maintain alignment across the respective initiatives.
3. Enhancing the Click to Pay customer experience
In September, EMVCo released the draft EMV® Click to Pay Customer Experience (CX) Guidelines for public review and feedback. The draft guidelines aim to support merchants, payment service providers, product owners, developers and CX designers in simplifying online checkout and making it more consistent, convenient and secure. This can help merchants to reduce fraud and lower cart abandonment.
At the meeting, EMVCo actively encouraged all interested stakeholders to share feedback, input and comments to support the ongoing enhancement and evolution of the guidelines.
This discussion was followed by a presentation by Dr. Thomas Fromherz, Fellow at Netcetera, summarising key learnings from Netcetera’s Click to Pay launch in 2022 and offering observations on how the customer experience could be enhanced further.
4. Industry collaboration in action
A key theme throughout the meeting was the value of engagement. A number of organisations presented at the meeting, sharing their insights on the latest developments impacting the payment ecosystem. We were pleased to hear from guest speaker Christina Hulka, Executive Director & COO at FIDO Alliance, who offered an overview of the state of passwordless authentication, the cost of legacy authentication and the importance of passkeys. As well as the presentations from CharIN, FIDO and Netcetera, EMVCo Advisors and industry partners shared perspectives on key topics shaping the future of payments.
James Rendell, CTO at Arcot from Broadcom, updated Advisors on key regulatory trends such as the European Union’s Payment Services Regulation (PSR1) and the new Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS). Steve Cole, Director of Tech Engagement at the Merchant Advisory Group, offered insight into potential future use cases for TapToMobile. Finally, Elliot Kramer, Engineering Leader for the Transit Wallet team at Google, explained how public transit can be improved with mobile wallets.
EMVCo welcomes relevant presentation proposals from EMVCo Advisors to share their knowledge and expertise at upcoming EMVCo meetings.
This active engagement and collaboration with the payments industry is key to EMVCo’s proven model for creating, evolving and promoting globally adopted specifications that support innovation and address marketplace needs.
EMVCo’s next Board of Advisors meeting will be in Melbourne, Australia, in March next year. Want to be there and participate? Become an EMVCo Associate.
by Carey Ferro