Secure Technology Alliance offers guidance on contactless payments

With increased demand for fast, secure and seamless payments, many payments industry stakeholders are exploring contactless payments as a way to meet consumer expectations. The Secure Technology Alliance, formerly known as the Smart Card Alliance, published a white paper that offers timely guidance for merchants, issuers and processors interested in implementing contactless payment programs successfully in the United States.

"The recommendations and best practices included in this white paper address both the perceived and actual challenges of the payment industry in implementing contactless EMV payment – from POS configuration and deployment, processor integration, card issuer consideration and customer experience in the checkout lane," said Randy Vanderhoof, Executive Director of the alliance.

The paper covers contactless acceptance considerations, such as testing and certification requirements and best practices; terminal-specific capabilities and enablement, from legacy magnetic stripe data to EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) contactless support; return on investment for contactless issuance; mobile payment options that support tokenization and wallet identification; recommendations for open-loop contactless payments in transit; the cardholder experience in various contactless scenarios and training.

"By addressing these concerns, the industry can acknowledge contactless as the next generation of payment technology, enabling greater checkout speed for merchants, providing a top of wallet advantage for issuers and creating a smoother deployment for processors," Vanderhoof added.

Part of ongoing initiatives

As part of the nonprofit organization's ongoing mission to stimulate understanding, adoption and application of secure solutions, the white paper was developed by the Secure Technology Alliance Payments Council, a group of industry stakeholders tasked with informing and educating the market about improving payments infrastructure security and enhancing the payments experience.

To further engage and educate the payments community, the alliance will host its 2018 Payments Summit in March in Orlando, Fla., where experts will discuss and analyze current industry trends in planned sessions covering a range of payment and security topics. To view the agenda and to register, visit www.stapayments.com . The white paper, Contactless Payments: Proposed Implementation Recommendations, can be downloaded at www.securetechalliance.org/publications-contactless-payments-proposed-implementation-recommendations/ .

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