HOLLY SPRINGS, N.C. - Paragon Application Systems announced the general availability of FASTest for Interac Shared Services, a comprehensive unit and regression-testing solution to support financial institutions and retailers migrating to EMV chip cards in Canada.
According to a news release, FASTest for Interac Shared Services simulates Interac's national shared-cash-dispensing network at ATMs/automated banking machines and its national debit service, called Interac direct payment.
To increase electronic payments security, Canada is migrating from magnetic-stripe cards to EMV chip cards. Chip cards provide an added level of security by storing cardholder information on an embedded computer chip instead of the mag-stripe.
Converting to EMV chip cards requires significant changes to Canadian financial-institution host platforms - changes that need to be thoroughly tested to avoid errors in production. Paragon's solution for Interac is a platform- and hardware-independent desktop application that acts as a live Interac member, enabling FIs to test code changes for debit and ABM transactions, verify EMV processing, and perform pre-certification testing.
"Using Paragon's FASTest for Interac Shared Services will facilitate the transition to EMV in Canada," said one of the largest direct-connector members of Interac in Canada. "One of the advantages in working with Paragon is their in-depth knowledge of EMV."
