We are celebrating a very special anniversary this month. It was exactly five years ago that the EMV Migration Forum held its first meeting, hosted by Mastercard, in Purchase, NY. It is amazing to think that so many years have passed since that initial gathering of 130 industry professionals.

Looking back on the list of those first attendees, many of those people still regularly attend meetings today. Even the mix of stakeholder types is similar. More than half the attendees came from financial institutions, merchants, processors, and the global payment networks. The rest were industry suppliers, industry associations, regional networks, consultants and integrators.

The mantra for the first four years of Forum meetings and workshops was “to address issues that require broad cooperation and coordination across many constituents in the payments space to ensure the successful adoption of EMV-enabled cards, devices, and terminals across the US market and to ensure that migration in the US market is efficient, timely and effective.” I bring that up because we are also celebrating the one-year anniversary of the rebranding of the EMV Migration Forum and launch of the U.S. Payments Forum. As EMV became increasingly normalized across large parts of the payments landscape, the U.S. Payments Forum’s attention shifted to issues related to mobile payments, contactless acceptance, advanced CNP fraud management tools, and the ongoing changes underlying the shift to digital payments like tokenization and anywhere-anytime Internet-connected mobile commerce. While EMV migration is still of significant importance to the retail petroleum, transportation, and the hospitality industry, the focus on education about next generation payments has moved to the forefront.

When we gather at the Hilton Rosemont Chicago O’Hare Hotel this week, some of the new payments program content will include a new Mobile Special Interest Group (SIG) to complement the existing Issuer and Merchant SIGs, and a plenary panel discussion called the Mobile Wallets: Landscape and Strategic Considerations for Merchants, Issuers and Providers. There will be plenary and breakout sessions with EMVCo, W3C and the FIDO Alliance providing updates on new payments specifications and standards and the Federal Reserve Bank providing an update on the Faster Payments Taskforce.

In addition, there will be a very interesting panel called “Looking Forward to the First EMV Reissuance Cycle.” Yes, we are rapidly approaching the first reissuance cycle for EMV cards and many people are predicting that there will be a dual-interface card market for the U.S. in the near future.

Lastly, if you are interested in the new age of payments, check out the IoT Payments 2017 Conference, hosted by the Secure Technology Alliance, October 10-11 in Austin TX.

Thank you for your support of the U.S. Payments Forum.

Communications and Education Working Committee
The Communications and Education Working Committee completed their review and update of the Common Debit AID video presentation originally recorded in 2015. The newly released presentation includes updates that reflect recent guidance from the Federal Reserve on debit routing.

Mobile and Contactless Payments Working Committee
The Mobile & Contactless Payments Working Committee recently completed the Mobile and Contactless Glossary which includes a comprehensive list of terms and definitions relative to the mobile and contactless industry. Various other working groups within the Forum have waited for the publication of this document and, going forward, will use it as input for future projects.

Petro Working Committee
After more than a year of collaborating through email, in-person meetings and workshops, the Petro Working Committee completed their FAQ resource which is intended to facilitate a common understanding of EMV issues in the U.S. retail petroleum industry.

Transit Contactless Open Payments Working Committee
The Transit Contactless Open Payments Working Committee has finalized the Transit 101 presentation which was presented at the June in-person meeting in Phoenix. The overall purpose of the presentation focuses on educating stakeholders on transit open payments and the distinct features of the transit point of entry retail environment.

For more information on Working Committee projects that are in process, please contact Mike Strock, mstrock@uspaymentsforum.org

• CMS Payments Intelligence

 

• “Hard to Swallow?,” Digital Transactions, June 1, 2017. Director Vanderhoof clarifies the state of card-not-present fraud in the U.S., stating that the overall proportion of CNP fraud is relatively even—and perhaps even decreasing—as a percentage of online sales.

• “U.S. Payments Forum Update: Almost Half of All U.S. Credit, Debit Transactions Are Chip-on-Chip,” Hospitality Technology, July 27, 2017. This article shares highlights from the summer market snapshot, including updates on the continuing progress of the U.S. EMV migration, improvements in the consumer’s chip transaction experience at the point of sale (POS), and priorities for the second half of 2017 to focus on unique chip migration challenges in merchant segments, such as hospitality and restaurants.