SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 20, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The U.S. migration to EMV chip payments is well underway with 120 million chip cards expected in the market by year end1. Though the migration has mostly focused on contact EMV payments and acceptance to date, leading payments consultancy FIME anticipates upcoming demand for contactless EMV and NFC payments and advises the industry to consider these technologies in their EMV migration plans.
"The recent announcement of Apple Pay, Apple's NFC-based mobile wallet, will drive consumer demand for NFC and contactless EMV payment acceptance," said Xavier Giandominici, director of FIME America. "The question we hear most often is whether the new terminals merchants are installing for EMV will also accept contactless EMV and NFC payments. Most terminals shipped today are flexible and are capable of accepting many forms of payment: magnetic stripe, EMV contact, EMV contactless and NFC payments. However, it is up to each individual merchant to choose if they want to enable acceptance of contactless and NFC payments. These are options they should consider in project plans for EMV migration."
FIME also sees value-added resellers (VARs), independent service organizations (ISOs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) playing a large role in guiding retailers through their EMV migrations and NFC implementations.
"In order to support the anticipated increased demand for EMV and NFC acceptance, VARs, ISOs and ISVs will require additional training and education to ensure they can best support their merchant customers. Today, FIME is working with industry associations and other channels to help provide this important education," Giandominici said.
With offices in the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, FIME has extensive experience consulting issuers and acquirers on global EMV chip and NFC implementations from initial education through to successful implementation. In the North Americas, FIME has achieved EMVCo accreditation and works closely with payment brands, industry participants and the cross-industry EMV Migration Forum to advance EMV chip migration.
FIME supports EMV migration and NFC projects in the U.S. with its consulting offer that can be adapted to an organization's requirements, with options including:
- Customized training events and workshops to equip internal project teams with the expertise and tools for a successful migration and beyond
- Analysis of the impact of migration on current infrastructure, processes and organization
- Identification of all business and technical requirements to build a complete roadmap to EMV chip technology
- Definition of testing and certification requirements
- Delivery of tools for in-house testing; or testing and integration services performed by FIME
- On-call personal consultant for advice throughout the entire migration process
For more information, visit http://www.fime.com/emv-consulting.html.
About FIME
FIME is a trusted provider of consulting services, certification and tools. It enables customers to bring seamless card and mobile transactions services to market effectively and confidently using secure chip or cloud-based solutions.
Working with the payment, telecom, transit and identity sectors, FIME is an implementation services partner for customers using contact and contactless EMV, near-field-communication (NFC), trusted service manager (TSM), trusted execution environment (TEE) and host card emulation (HCE) technologies. FIME supports customers from project initiation to completion by advising on technical requirements, consulting on industry regulations certification authority implementation and streamlining testing and certification activity.
With 12 offices around the world, serving more than 3,000 clients in 13 languages, FIME's customers benefit from a combination of global expertise and local knowledge through a single point of contact. FIME's dedicated team uses its expertise to create and actively contribute to the advancement and simplification of certification processes. Its service capacity also provides resource scalability to adapt to individual customer needs.
FIME currently has operations across America (Canada and the United States), Asia (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan), Europe (France), India and the Middle East (Dubai).
FIME partners with leading payment schemes and industry bodies to provide consultancy and certifications services for: American Express, Calypso Networks Association, China UnionPay, Discover, eftpos, EMVCo, EMV Migration Forum, First Data, Global Certification Forum (GCF), GlobalPlatform, GSMA, Interac, JCB, MasterCard, Network for Electronic Transfers (NETS), NFC Forum, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), National Standard for Chip Card Specification (NSICC), OSCar Consortium, Softcard and Visa.
FIME America's offices are located in San Francisco and Montreal.
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1 EMV Migration Forum 2014, http://www.emv-connection.com/emv-migration-forum-reaches-two-year-anniversary-supporting-u-s-migration-to-emv-chip-payments/#more-3079