Striking a balance between security and convenience remains a key objective for merchants, card issuers and those parties involved in support of payment facilitation and processing. Keeping a balance will require the coordination of all parties involved, which is enhanced by business alliances. Established avenues enable rapid communication between participants and across the various devices and instruments being involved to authenticate identity and validate transactional veracity.
FIDO Alliance executive director Brett McDowell asserted that the Alliance “supports this effort from the Smart Card Alliance to educate and broaden the use of the FIDO authentication standards,” adding, “With FIDO specifications where all user credentials are stored on-device to protect them from scalable attack, utilizing trusted hardware such as a secure element can offer additional protection for those credentials.”
By level setting with industry standards, the payment industry has been able to ensure high levels of information sharing. It remains to be seen how the impact of EMV standards in the U.S. ultimately affects conversion rates at the POS and how smart card technology will address the increased fraud being registered in card not present (CNF) transactions.
Overview by Joesph Walent, Senior Analyst, Emerging Technologies at Mercator Advisory Group
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