EMV^® 3-D Secure Specification

EMV^® 3-D Secure (3DS) is a messaging protocol that promotes frictionless consumer authentication and enables consumers to authenticate themselves with their card issuer when making card-not-present (CNP) e-commerce purchases. The additional security layer helps prevent unauthorised CNP transactions and helps protect the merchant from exposure to CNP fraud.

The three domains consist of the merchant / acquirer domain, issuer domain, and the interoperability domain (e.g. payment systems). EMVCo has created, owns and manages the EMV^® 3-D Secure – Protocol and Core Functions Specification v2.2.0 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 one-time 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 has also made available the full EMV^® 3DS Test Platform, which enables the functional testing of EMV^® 3DS solutions. Letters of Approval are currently being issued for those 3DS products that have successfully tested against version 2.1.0. A list of approved products can be found on the EMVCo website. Products submitted for EMV^® 3DS v2.2.0 compliance testing will also be tested against EMV^® 3DS v2.1.0 to receive an EMV^® 3DS v2.2.0 Letter of Approval. Testing support for version 2.2.0 is expected to be available mid-2019.