Contactless Payment Acceptance: How EMVCo is Supporting Consumer Mobile Devices Update

In response to requests from the payments industry, EMVCo has established a dedicated initiative to explore how to evolve EMV® Specifications and testing to support the use of consumer smartphones and tablets for contactless payment acceptance. In this Q&A post, EMVCo Director of Technology Bastien Latge provides insight into EMVCo’s efforts in this area, including the pilot functional testing programme – the TapToMobile Early Adopter Programme – to evaluate consumer mobile devices What is the objective of EMVCo’s TapToMobile initiative? Bastien Latge: Ultimately, the goal is to enable a good consumer experience when consumer mobile devices are used for contactless payment acceptance. So how do we go about doing this? Specifically, we are looking at how we can adapt the terminal testing programme and EMV Contactless Specifications for these devices to support the delivery of consistent payment experiences for both merchants and consumers. What is the genesis of this initiative? Bastien Latge: Mobile payment acceptance is an area of great interest to EMVCo Associates and Subscribers. As key representatives of the payments industry that provide both strategic and technical direction to EMVCo, they requested a dedicated initiative to support the use of consumer mobile devices for contactless payment acceptance. This EMVCo initiative focuses specifically on consumer mobile devices that use built-in contactless capabilities for payment acceptance, rather than external hardware, like a dongle. Devices that rely on additional hardware are already addressed by the existing EMV Contactless Specifications and the existing terminal testing programme. How specifically is EMVCo working to address the use of consumer mobile devices for contactless payment acceptance? Bastien Latge: EMVCo is working closely with EMVCo Associates and Subscribers, comprised of banks, vendors, and merchants, amongst others, on this effort. This includes collaboration via dedicated Special Interest Meetings (SIM), which are forums for EMVCo to receive input from the industry. We have held two SIMs on this topic in 2020 already, and there will be more scheduled in future months as the initiative progresses. We recently launched the Early Adopter Programme, a pilot functional testing programme to evaluate consumer mobile devices with built-in contactless capability for contactless payment acceptance. This programme was originally named the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Mobile Early Adopter Programme, and renamed to the TapToMobile Early Adopter Programme in September 2021. EMVCo has also established a TapToMobile Task Force as part of its objective to enable a good consumer experience when mobile devices are used for contactless payment acceptance. The task force is focused specifically on evaluating the best way to interact with merchants and consumers when using consumer mobile devices as acceptance devices. Can you provide more insight into the objective of the TapToMobile Early Adopter Programme? Bastien Latge: Feedback from EMVCo Associates and Subscribers highlighted functional testing for consumer devices as a priority for the industry. Specifically, merchants and acquirers have requested testing processes that provide assurance that consumer mobile devices used for payment acceptance can perform in a way that delivers a consistent and seamless experience for consumers. In the absence of an EMVCo functional testing programme for consumer devices with built-in contactless capability, in October 2020 EMVCo launched the Early Adopter Programme as an interim mechanism to address this industry need for testing these devices. Based on feedback from payments stakeholders, EMVCo extended the Early Adopter Programme in September 2021 to NFC chipset providers, who design new products and manage NFC integration for many device makers. Originally set to conclude in September 2021, the programme will now run through April