A new payments security sheriff is in town. A consortium of merchants, processors and EFT debit networks have formed an industry standards group, Secure Payments Partnership, that takes aim at the hold EMVCo and PCI currently have to influence how payment data is secured. Digital Transactions explains:
Several national merchant trade groups and PIN-debit networks have founded an advocacy group meant to give them a bigger role in the development of electronic-payment security standards.
Founding members of the new Secure Payments Partnership include the Food Marketing Institute, National Retail Federation, National Association of Convenience Stores, National Grocers Association, First Data Corp.’s Star debit network, and Shazam, an Iowa-based debit network, merchant acquirer and card processor.
The members of this group find that their opinions and their role in payment security are overlooked by the legacy organizations and they are shut out of influencing outcomes that impact their operations. The way that EMV standards were created and rolled out in the U.S. instigated the development of this new group:
The problem is that these kinds of groups like PCI and EMVCo have advisory committees where merchants can state their views. That’s not an effective substitute for having an opportunity to make decisions and being part of the decision-making process,” (counsel, attorney Douglas Kantor, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington, D.C.) tells Digital Transactions News. “Our view is everybody ought to have a part.”
Kantor notes that the coming of EMV chip cards to the U.S. presented major problems for the PIN-debit networks. The Dodd-Frank Act’s Durbin Amendment requires that merchants have network choice for routing debit transactions, but EMV originally was designed by the big networks for European markets that often had only one debit option. Retrofitting EMV for the diversified U.S. debit market required considerable operational work and also generated conflicts between big merchants and the global networks over transaction routing.
More of the group’s objectives can be found on their website: https://www.securepaymentspartnership.com
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group