EMV^® 3-D Secure Specification

EMV^® 3-D Secure (3DS) is a messaging protocol that promotes frictionless consumer authentication when making card-not-present (CNP) e-commerce purchases. It enables consumers to actively authenticate themselves with their card issuers if cardholder verification is required. Consumer authentication by the exchange of 3DS data between the merchant and a card issuer can increase authorisation approval rates, as well as potentially reduce the risk of fraud.

The three domains consist of the merchant / acquirer domain, issuer domain, and the interoperability domain (i.e. payment systems).

EMVCo has created, owns and manages the EMV 3-D Secure – Protocol and Core Functions Specification v2.1.0 and related industry materials.

The EMV^® 3-D Secure Specification:

• Supports specific app-based purchases on mobile and other consumer devices.
• Promotes an improved consumer experience by enabling intelligent risk-based decisioning that encourages frictionless consumer authentication.
• Delivers enhanced security features.
• Specifies use of multiple options for step-up authentication, including onetime passcodes, as well as biometrics via out-of-band authentication flows.
• Enhances functionality that enables merchants to integrate the authentication process into their checkout experiences, for both app and browser-based implementations.
• Offers performance improvements for end-to-end message processing.
• Adds a non-payment message category to provide cardholder verification details to support various non-payment activities, such as adding a payment card to a digital wallet.
• Enables merchant-initiated account verification.
• Is available on a royalty-free basis to all industry participants and to the public.

EMVCo is using this specification to develop functional testing for EMV^® 3DS solutions to evaluate their compliance to version 2.1.0. It has published an approval administrative process, which specifies how to submit a product for compliance testing and request for its approval. This is supported by an EMVCo bulletin, which outlines the fee structure for EMV^® 3DS approval requests.