Barnes and FIME’s Joint EMV & NFC Personalization Validation Tool Qualified by MasterCard®
26 March 2015 – EMV® chip testing providers, Barnes International and FIME, have announced that their jointly-developed personalization validation tool (PVT) has achieved official qualification against MasterCard’s latest requirements, version 8.1. The test tool helps international issuers, card manufacturers and personalization bureaus to speed up the certification and launch of their contact and contactless EMV card, and near field communication (NFC) payments projects.
The tool will be of particular interest to the US-based payment community, as it prepares its existing systems for the adoption of EMV technology by October 2015.
“Verifying the personalization of EMV cards and mobile payment applications is essential,” comments Vincent Poty, Head of Strategy and Corporate Development at FIME. “The ecosystem is evolving with new payment channels, security technologies and fraud prevention mechanisms. On top of this, market demand for quicker, more convenient and more secure payments is driving innovation. Up-to-date test tools are therefore essential for swift, affordable and smooth product launches.”
The tool can be used to validate the personalization of contact, contactless and dual interface EMV chip cards. Additionally, NFC mobiles and any contactless-enabled devices such as fobs and wristbands that support the MasterCard PayPass™ payment application, can be evaluated.
“Preparing and launching MasterCard compliant products is optimised with a tool like this,” adds Brian Summerhayes, Managing Director at Barnes International. “Testing throughout development helps issuers avoid costly and time consuming delays. It’s even more important in the US as the EMV chip must support more than one payment system to deliver merchant processing options. Testing against the latest specifications confirms that this requirement has been achieved.”
Barnes and FIME have combined their expertise since 2011 to effectively meet the requirements of MasterCard. The tool is available in four forms: Barnes CPT 3000v3 CPV module; Barnes CAT 3000v3 module; Barnes CPT Pro Issuer FIME-CPV; and PersevalPro Issuer FIME-CPV.
