Visa is pushing forward on its RFID-enabled cards through the Visa Contactless program (FAQ) in the United States and overseas, reports RFID Journal.
In November, the company released a global contactless-payments specification, which is designed to enable Visa Contactless cardholders from all parts of the world to use their cards at any merchant that has deployed the spec in its RFID-enabled payment terminals. The global specification includes support for Visa Contactless EMV-based cards, which combine RFID technology—for transmitting payment data over RF with an RFID-enabled payment terminal—with EMV, a payment protocol used in Europe and Asia. The spec also supports non-EMV-based contactless cards currently being issued by banks in the United States.
In addition, Visa Europe—Visa’s European business unit—announced that it is working with issuing banks to roll out Visa Contactless EMV-based cards across the United Kingdom, starting in London, by the end of next year.
EMV is an acronym derived from the names of the three companies that developed it: EuroPay, MasterCard and Visa. It was developed to improve security and enable offline payment transactions. The EMV protocol heightens security by using encryption algorithms to authenticate the card’s legitimacy.
EMV cards contain an embedded integrated circuit that stores encrypted information about the account and can process the authentication protocols with the payment terminal. EMV transactions can be done either in online mode, where the payment-processing terminal links with a payment-processing center, or offline, with authentication taking place only between the payment card and the payment terminal.
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