News

New guide details ways to optimize EMV transaction speed

October 7, 2016

Payments stakeholders have identified transaction speeds as an area for improvement of EMV chip technology in the U.S.

To provide guidance on speeding up EMV transaction times, the U.S. Payments Forum has released "Optimizing Transaction Speed at the POS."

According to a press release, the white paper includes three general approaches to improving EMV transaction times at checkout. These include:

• faster EMV solutions — online-only EMV transaction processing solutions offered by American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa retain the security of EMV while removing dependencies that can affect the cardholder perception of transaction time;
• contactless transactions — merchants and cardholders benefit from perceived and actual reduced transaction times compared with contact methods; and
• EMV checkout optimization — merchants and issuers can implement various techniques arising from new learnings and traditional approaches to help optimize the chip checkout experience.

The paper presents a detailed description and analysis of each category, and includes considerations and implications for various stakeholder groups, the release said.

"The first phase of the chip migration was focused primarily on getting up and running with chip card acceptance to reduce in-store fraud," said U.S. Payments Forum Director Randy Vanderhoof. "This white paper is a primer for different optional techniques that may be used to speed the chip transaction process at the point of sale, and provides a starting point for stakeholders interested in pursuing one or more of the approaches."