The Smart Card Alliance, an industry group organized to promote wider use of cards enabled with computer chips, is starting a forum designed to facilitate the implementation of cards with chips in the U.S.
The EMV Migration Forum will be open to both individual credit unions and credit union trade associations and will help formulate and promulgate best practices for chip card readers and other devices as well as provide guidance on technical issues and promote consumer awareness of the new technology.
EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and VISA, a global standard for inter-operation of integrated circuit cards, the formal name for the cards that carry the chips.
"We have seen in other markets around the world that cooperation and alignment of all participants' activities are necessary to ensure that the migration to EMV-enabled cards, devices, and terminals is efficient, timely, and effective," said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. "Industry stakeholders have called for a neutral forum to play this role for the U.S. market. By creating an organization that brings together all of the payments stakeholders who have a direct role in the EMV migration in the U.S., without regard to their past or present involvement with smart cards or other chip technologies, the EMV Migration Forum will be able to focus on the needed coordination and cooperation across the payments landscape."
Julie Conroy McNelley, research director for Aite Group's retail banking practice, said, "The cross-industry collaboration that this initiative represents will be welcome for all stakeholders in the value chain. Merchants and issuers have been looking for unified direction and guidance, and this announcement promises to meet that need."
"EMV's arrival in the U.S. has profound implications for issuers, merchants and the entire payments industry. While the global EMV experience will help, the devil is in the implementation details and common U.S. approaches will be needed for a smooth EMV transition," said George Peabody, Mercator Advisory Group's director of emerging technologies. "The EMV Migration Forum can speed deployment as well as improve the return on the considerable EMV investment in the U.S."
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