Director’s Corner

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Payments

It’s December, which means we are at the start of another payments-heavy holiday shopping season, one that is going to be dramatically different than previous years in a number of important ways.

This is the third holiday season since the EMV fraud liability shifts in October 2015, the first season that 55 percent of spend is now on chip cards, and 96 percent of the top 200 merchants are now accepting chip payments. In most parts of the U.S., swiping a card has become the exception rather than the rule, and for some consumers this season, they will also be tapping to pay with a mobile app, smart watch, or fitness band.

What won’t be different for most holiday shoppers is being able to tap their EMV card instead of inserting it when they are looking for that faster checkout experience. While the U.S. came late to the party with contact-only EMV cards (some major markets around the globe have more than 50% contactless penetration), that could change soon. We have already seen some major card issuers in the U.S., including Citibank, Wells Fargo, Capital One and American Express, offering contactless cards for certain card portfolios and for customers who request them.

Merchant acceptance of contactless is still hovering around 25% this holiday season, but Javelin Strategy & Research predicts that number will increase to 33% in two years. That percentage is likely to increase even further in certain major transit centers when the MTA/New York City Transit and Boston’s MBTA join Chicago and begin accepting payments on subways, trains, and buses from bank-issued open loop contactless cards and NFC-enabled mobile devices. That is good timing for financial institutions to start their three to five year procurement planning to replace soon-to-expire first generation EMV contact-only cards. For now, mobile payments schemes like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and others can fill the void for consumers preferring to tap their way through the shopping season while the card market plays catch-up.

We will discuss these topics, as well as new developments involving card-not-present security standards from X9 and a deeper dive into implementing online security solutions like 3-D Secure 2.0, at the Two-Day All Member Meeting in New Orleans December 5-6. For those of you in New Orleans, I look forward to seeing you. If you’re unable to make it in person, you’ll be able to access many of the presentations once the event has concluded.

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

Transit Contactless Open Payments Resources

The U.S. Payments Forum Transit Contactless Open Payments Committee completed its first two deliverables. The Technical Solution for Transit Contactless Open Payments Use Case 1: Pay As You Go/Card white paper provides technical solution guidance for implementing transit contactless open payments use cases with contactless EMV cards. The presentation, The 101 on Transit Contactless Open Payments, was published as a members-only resource to provide a baseline understanding of how EMV contactless open loop payments may work in the U.S. and Canadian transit environment from a technological perspective.

New and Updated EMV Resources

The ATM Working Committee published a new white paper, EMV Troubleshooting Guide for ATM Owners and Operators, to provide recommendations to help ATM owners/operators prevent some common transaction problems, and offer suggestions for troubleshooting problems when they do occur.

The Testing and Certification Working Committee is holding its third workshop, EMV Contactless Testing & Certification Workshop for VARs, ISVs and ISOs, on December 6^th following the U.S. Payments Forum member meeting. During this workshop, presenters from American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa will review requirements for EMV contactless testing and certification in the U.S.

The Petroleum Working Committee and Communications and Education Working Committee, in partnership with Conexxus, held a successful webinar in November on Accepting EMV Chip Payments at the Fuel Pump. The webinar recording is available on the U.S. Payments Forum web site.

The U.S. Payments Forum published the members-only white paper, Troubleshooting Data Quality Issues. This white paper provides a guide for troubleshooting common data quality issues that have been seen by the networks, acquirers and issuers. The Forum also published its third update to the Optimizing Transaction Time at the POS white paper, adding a new section on increasing the card-to-reader communication speed.

Working Committee Projects Update

ATM Working Committee

The ATMC Working Committee recently completed the Troubleshooting at the ATM white paper, which provides a troubleshooting guide for ATM industry stakeholders and specifically for smaller and independent ATM owners converting to EMV. The white paper is expected to be published in early to mid-December.

Testing and Certification Working Committee

The Testing and Certfication Working Committee scheduled, and successful executed, a training workshop in September during the U.S. Payments Forum Member Meeting in Chicago. The workshop focused on testing and certification requirements for contactless and was aimed specifically at ISVs, VARs and ISOs. Another similar training will be held on the same topic on Wednesday, December 6 in New Orleans.

Transit Contactless Open Payments Working Committee

Earlier in September 2017, the Transit Contactless Open Payments Working Committee completed the Technical Solution for Transit Contactless Open Payments white paper for the first use case – pay as you go fares with contactless cards. The white paper provides a use case approach to identify scenarios and the challenges associated with those scenarios for transit merchants of contactless open payments.

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

Other New Payments Resources

The Secure Technology Alliance Payments Council published a white paper, Implementation Considerations for for Contactless Payment-Enabled Wearables. The white paper provides an educational resource on the wearables landscape focusing on ISO/IEC 14443/secure element-based implementations and discusses key considerations for implementing payments in wearables.

The Secure Technology Alliance IoT Security Council and Payments Council collaborated to publish a new white paper, IoT and Payments: Current Market Landscape. The white paper provides a resource for the industry that outlines the current market landscape for implementing payments with IoT devices and provides guidance for developing IoT applications that will include payment.

New Members

• Samsung Pay, Inc.
• U.S. Postal Service

Upcoming March Meeting

The first U.S. Payments Forum meeting of 2018 has been scheduled for March 27-28, 2018, at Omni Orlando Resort at Champions Gate in Florida. For the first time, a U.S. Payments Forum meeting is being held in conjunction with the Secure Technology Alliance Payments Summit. The Payment Summit is the premier payments industry conference and for the second year in a row, will be co-located with the ICMA Expo, the premier card manufacturing and personalization expo.

All Forum members are welcome to attend the U.S. Payments Forum sessions and the combined Payments Summit and ICMA Expo conference sessions. As stipulated in the Forum bylaws, member organizations will be allowed a maximum number of participants to attend at no charge based on their level of membership; these complimentary member registrations provide access to both Forum sessions and the full Payments Summit.

You can register by visiting this link. We recommend you register and make your travel accommodations to ensure you get a favorable flight and secure your hotel room before they’re booked.