Highlights from the EMVCo Nashville Board of Advisors Meeting

In October, EMVCo Advisors met at the EMVCo Board of Advisors Meeting in Nashville to engage in the strategic direction of EMVCo and discuss payments industry challenges and opportunities with other stakeholders. A key focus of the event was industry collaboration, with two guest speakers and four EMVCo Associates giving presentations on topics relevant to the payments industry. In this post, Oliver Manahan, Director of Engagement and Operations at EMVCo, summarises the key topics and discussions. 1. Exploring open payments for electric vehicle charging In September, EMVCo announced that it had formed an Electric Vehicle Open Payments Task Force and was working with various industry stakeholders to explore how EMV® payment technology could help support a secure and seamless electric vehicle (EV) charging payment experience. Discussions in Nashville centred on the challenges facing the EV charging ecosystem, the potential for open payments and the scope of EMVCo’s work in this area. EMVCo’s engagement with CharIN – and other industry bodies such as the Secure Technology Alliance – to examine opportunities for integrating EMV Specifications with existing EV charging standards and protocols to support interoperable, open payments was also discussed. Further to this engagement, EMVCo was pleased to welcome Erika Myers, Executive Director for CharIN North America, to explore how CharIN is empowering the next level of e-mobility and its work to promote standards for EV charging systems around the world. Erika also gave insight into the ISO 15118 ‘Plug & Charge’ Standard and the importance of developing a solution that is adopted by all relevant players. 2. Towards a seamless TapToMobile user experience TapToMobile allows merchants to accept contactless payments directly on NFC-enabled consumer mobile devices (such as smartphones phones or tablets) and enterprise devices (such as the handheld devices used by a server to take an order, accept a payment and generate a receipt) with no need for an additional connected device, dongle or attachment. At the meeting, EMVCo gave an update on its TapToMobile initiative, which aims to enable a good experience when these devices are used for contactless payment acceptance. A key finding of EMVCo’s TapToMobile Early Adopter Programme was that the quality of the TapToMobile user experience is mainly dependent on NFC ‘read ranges’, which refers to how close the payment device needs to be to the acceptance device for payment information to flow. While traditional terminals have a high read range (up to 4cm), consumer and enterprise devices – which were not designed with payments as the intended primary function – have a more limited range. To address this, EMVCo is exploring the introduction of minimum acceptance criteria and a supporting approval process for ‘mobile’ devices – in addition to the existing process for traditional payment devices – that defines three levels of user experience with different requirements relating to read range and positioning as outlined within the EMV Contactless Interface Specification. The introduction of two new Reduced Range Approval Processes will allow EMVCo and the industry to start measuring the performance of these devices and provide feedback on how to improve their read range over time. EMVCo will continue to work closely with industry partners such as NFC Forum and PCI SSC to maintain alignment across the respective initiatives. 3. Enhancing the Click to Pay customer experience In September, EMVCo released the draft EMV® Click to Pay Customer Experience (CX) Guidelines for public review and feedback. The draft guidelines aim to support merchants, payment service providers, product owners, developers and CX designers in simplifying online checkout and making it more consistent, convenient and secure. This can help merchants to reduce fraud and lower cart abandonment. At the meeting, EMVCo actively encouraged all int