PRINCETON JUNCTION, N.J., Jan. 31, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Secure Technology Alliance Payments, Mobile and Transportation Councils had a productive year in 2017 with strong member participation, quality deliverables, and significant headway in stimulating the understanding, adoption and widespread application of secure technologies in the payments space.
“The industry and technology councils are a critical piece in the Alliance’s efforts to provide market intelligence, thought leadership and influence on industry best practices to ensure successful implementations of new and emerging technologies,” said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Secure Technology Alliance. “These payments-focused councils made a big impact on this mission in 2017 by providing critical implementation guidance on new technologies like blockchain and contactless-enabled wearables, and through addressing best practices for mobile identity and transit payments.”
Payments Council
The Payments Council updated its charter in 2017 to more broadly focus on facilitating the adoption of secure payments and payment applications in the U.S. They are accomplishing this through industry dialogue, commentary on standards and specifications, technical guidance and educational programs.
New emerging technologies like blockchain and contactless-enabled wearables were focuses for the council in 2017. The council released two white papers, “Blockchain and Smart Card Technology,” and “Implementation Considerations for Contactless Payment-Enabled Wearables.”
In 2018, the council plans to develop projects on other key payments topics, including securing the card-not-present fraud environment, contactless payments implementation recommendations, biometrics and use cases for EMVCo Payment Account Reference (PAR).
Mobile Council
The Mobile Council focuses on accelerating market adoption of secure mobile applications. It also focuses on educating the industry on implementation and security considerations of utilizing different technologies for distributing, storing and using secure credentials on personal mobile and wearable devices.
In 2017, the council explored new authentication mechanisms and use cases where authentication is critical with a white paper, “Mobile Identity Authentication.” The council also has plans to develop a high-level resource on the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) in 2018.
Transportation Council
The Transportation Council works to accelerate the deployment of standards-based smart card payment programs within the transportation industry through promoting adoption of interoperable contactless smart card and other secure device payment systems for transit and other transportation services.
Council activities in 2017 included a Smart Cities and Transportation Workshop in Salt Lake City, in collaboration with the IoT Security Council; an EMV and Parking panel at the International Parking Institute (IPI) conference; and the “Multimodal Payments Convergence -- Part One: Emerging Models and Use Cases” white paper, the first in a two-part series being developed in collaboration with the Association for Commuter Transportation (ACT). The white paper explores real-world implementations of payments convergence to provide a foundation for transit agencies considering supporting these new models.
The council will continue its efforts on the two-part resource series in 2018, which will describe alternative visions for payment systems, identify many of the potential barriers to implementation of multimodal payment strategies, and suggest ways of addressing these challenges.
The Payments, Mobile and Transportation Councils will be participating in the 2018 Payments Summit, being held March 27-29 in Orlando, Florida. Registration, exhibition, agenda and other details can be found at www.stapayments.com.
To learn more about the Secure Technology Alliance councils and available resources, visit https://www.securetechalliance.org/alliance-industry-councils/.
About the Secure Technology Alliance
The Secure Technology Alliance is a not-for-profit, multi-industry association working to stimulate the understanding, adoption and widespread application of secure solutions, including smart cards, embedded chip technology, and related hardware and software across a variety of markets including authentication, commerce and Internet of Things (IoT).
The Secure Technology Alliance, formerly known as the Smart Card Alliance, invests heavily in education on the appropriate uses of secure technologies to enable privacy and data protection. The Secure Technology Alliance delivers on its mission through training, research, publications, industry outreach and open forums for end users and industry stakeholders in payments, mobile, healthcare, identity and access, transportation, and the IoT in the U.S. and Latin America.
For more information, please visit www.securetechalliance.org.
CONTACT:
Adrian Loth
Montner Tech PR
203-226-9290
aloth@montner.com