David Worthington, VP of Business Development at Rambus
Technical body EMVCo launched version two of its EMV® Payment Tokenization Specification – Technical Framework in September. The market has evolved rapidly since v1.0 was launched in 2014 – to address the needs of digital payments including eCommerce, and minimize the fraud risk associated to an exposure of PANs – so v2.0 has been eagerly anticipated by the ecosystem.
Here’s a few things that stood out for me among the key updates and revisions.
Continuous development
As with all technology, the innovation curve it too steep for standardization to keep pace. This update therefore brings the framework in line with many of the developments that have happened over the past couple of years. It also addresses a range of feedback from live implementations of the technology to smooth the path for widespread deployment.
For example, EMVCo released an interim note in 2016 on its EMV Payment Account Reference (PAR)which enables merchants, acquirers and payment processors to link together a cardholder’s EMV payment token and PAN transactions. Version 2.0 of the EMV tokenization specification clarifies this at a standards level and sets the rules for BIN controllers (such as an ISO IIN Card Issuer) to implement PAR for their BINs.