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EMV Migration Forum paper takes on EMV instant issuance issues

"Implementing EMV in the U.S.: Best Practices in Support of EMV Instant Issuance," offers guidance for the successful development of an EMV-enabled instant issuance program.

November 3, 2015

Many U.S. financial institutions benefit from the ability to instantly issue credit and debit cards in-branch. But many also experience challenges in the transition from an existing mag stripe-based program to an EMV-enabled program.

To help these FIs, the EMV Migration Forum has released a white paper, "Implementing EMV in the U.S.: Best Practices in Support of EMV Instant Issuance," which explains best practices and implementation steps for the successful development of an EMV-enabled instant issuance program.

"[T]he advanced security [that] chip cards provide makes the personalization and issuance of cards more complicated than the relatively simple processes required to issue magnetic stripe-only cards," said Randy Vanderhoof, director of the EMV Migration Forum. "After reading this white paper, financial institutions will better understand all of the considerations and necessary implementation steps for transitioning to a chip-enabled instant issuance program."

The white paper reviews implementation risks for EMV-enabled instant issuance and suggests methods to reduce these risks through each phase of execution, including:

• planning — involves identification of project team stakeholders and trusted vendor partners, as well as determination of costs, card ordering and inventory monitoring, profile determination, logical security, server updates and processor updates;
• development — covers issuer preparation and implementation, payment network certification, and key management; and
• go-live — addresses key management, implementation and configuration of hardware and software, card validation, consumer education, employee training and maintenance.

The white paper was developed by the instant issuance project team of the EMV Migration Forum, with leadership from Philip Andreae of Oberthur Technologies and Jennifer Cristallo of Entrust Datacard.

Download "Implementing EMV in the U.S.: Best Practices in Support of EMV Instant Issuance."