EMV® Secure Remote Commerce and W3C Web Payment Specifications

EMV^® Secure Remote Commerce and W3C Web Payment Specifications Bastien Latge, EMVCo Director of Technology Given the rapid growth of remote commerce, various industry organisations have taken steps to address key challenges such as checkout friction and ecosystem complexity. EMVCo published the EMV^® Secure Remote Commerce (SRC) Specifications to provide a foundation for a consistent, streamlined checkout experience across a variety of remotecheckout environments. Within a similar context, W3C has published the Payment Request API and Payment Handler API, which standardises mechanisms to streamline checkout and allow merchants to utilise one or more payment methods with minimal integration. What are the synergies? W3C Web Payments and EMV SRC could work together to provide a consumer with access to digital cards and facilitate the checkout experience. In this example, W3C Web Payment APIs within a web-browser could be used to access the functionality of a role within the SRC ecosystem. This could reduce the need for repetitive manual cardholder data entry, potentially lowering shopping cart abandonment. Understanding the differences The most significant difference is that while W3C’s work addresses a broad range of payment methods but focuses on the web, EMV SRC covers card-based payments across various devices and environments. This means they should not be seen as competing specifications trying to solve the same problem. Merchants do not have to make a choice between EMV SRC and W3C Payment APIs. Rather, both initiatives can combine to contribute towards consistent, easy web-based payments. What next? Identifying opportunities for alignment is an ongoing process. Part of the scope of the Web Payment Security Interest Group, formed by EMVCo, FIDO Alliance and W3C to collaborate on a vision for web payment security and interoperability, is to discuss areas of commonality across EMV SRC and W3C Payment API. How the specifications can work together to provide a consumer with access to digital cards and facilitate the checkout experience is just one example of the potential synergies that the group will explore. EMV^® is a registered trademark in the U.S. and other countries and an unregistered trademark elsewhere. The EMV trademark is owned by EMVCo, LLC. © 2019 EMVCo, LLC. All rights reserved.