POS team-up to boost EMV migration

First Data and UL (formerly Underwriters Laboratory) will collaborate to help U.S. merchants expedite their acceptance of EMV-enabled credit and debit cards.

Large-scale theft of consumer payment data from merchants’ integrated point-of-sale systems is among the biggest issues facing the payments industry. Another challenge comes from the significant number of merchants, POS integrators, and other payment providers looking to certify new EMV-capable devices in response to the October 2015 fraud liability shift from bank to retailer.

“The integration of EMV technology is a massive operational undertaking for our merchant clients across the country,” says Steve Mathison, vice-president of Payment Acceptance at First Data. “Coupled with a multilayered security program that includes tokens and encryption, EMV adoption will greatly reduce the threat of fraudulent payments at the point of sale, but the implementation can be complex and burdensome. We believe this collaboration with UL will help to simplify the process a merchant must complete to certify compliance with EMV standards.”

The solution will give large and mid-size merchants with integrated POS systems a one-stop EMV migration and certification solution for all major payment networks. Combining UL’s accredited testing tools and centralized certification management platforms streamlines EMV migration by combining training, test tools, and testing services, while eliminating the inefficiencies found in the current process of certifying to multiple end-points and certification authorities.

UL Transaction Security is a division within UL that guides companies in the payments, mobile, government, and transit domains through the complex world of secure electronic transactions.