March U.S. Payments Forum Meeting Recap

A special plenary session was held to recognize U.S. Payments Forum members for their leadership and contributions to Forum projects in 2016. This included ATMIA Executive Director, David Tente, for his leadership as a co-chair of the ATM Working Committee.  The Forum 2016 Honor Roll can be found on the Forum web site. The Forum Steering Committee and staff thank all members for their contributions and for their enthusiastic participation in projects that make a difference for the payments industry.

Highlights from Working Committees, SIGs and Birds of a Feather sessions:

• The ATM Working Committee is launching a new project, “Preventing and Troubleshooting EMV Transaction & Hardware Issues,” and plans to continue holding educational workshops for the industry

• The Card Not Present Working Committee is reviewing its charter and currently working on a “True Cost of Fraud” white paper project, as well as an “Emerging Fraud Trends” project. These projects will inform future activities for the committee

• The Communications and Education Working Committee will soon publish a paper on EMV receipts best practices to help educate on the requirements for certain tags to be printed on receipts. They are also planning a series of webinars for the petroleum industry

• The Mobile and Contactless Working Committee held productive working sessions for each of its four projects: defining contactless and mobile wallet requirements for all stakeholders; an analysis of mobile wallets and strategic considerations for implementation; an overview of relevant standards and testing and certification associated with mobile and contactless payments; and a project on tokenization and implementation challenges

• The Petro Working Committee held discussions on the EMV Fleet Tag Process document in draft, as well as a merchant roundtable on indoor and outdoor EMV implementation

• The recently-launched Transit Contactless Open Payments Working Committee held a kick-off session to discuss the scope of the Committee activities and possible projects. The Committee’s goal is to have stakeholders work collaboratively to identify possible solutions that address the challenges of implementing contactless open payments within transit’s unique retail environment

• Well-attended educational sessions and Birds of a Feather (BOF) sessions included: Data Quality and Troubleshooting Recurring Problems BOF; Hospitality BOF; Unattended EMV BOF; and an educational session on U.S. Common Debit AID Implementation.

• Topics discussed in the merchant and issuer SIGs included: U.S. Common Debit AID roll-out updates; need for recommended communication piece for merchants not yet accepting chip; new fraud mechanisms; data quality issues; and certification experiences