July 8, 2015 - Payment industry engagement in the evolution of the EMVCo Specifications for payment technologies, including tokenisation and 3D Secure 2.0, has continued to increase, with eight new members joining EMVCo's Associate Programme in the past twelve months:

• Bank of America Merchant Services - Business Associate

• CardinalCommerce - Business and Technical Associate

• China Information Technology Security Evaluation Center - Technical Associate

• Creditcall - Business and Technical Associate

• Intel - Technical Associate

• RSA - Technical Associate

• Shazam - Business and Technical Associate

• Soft Space - Technical Associate

Currently, there are 41 organisations which contribute to EMVCo as Business Associates, and 38 which participate as Technical Associates.

The EMVCo Associates Programme allows payment industry stakeholders worldwide to play an active role in providing input to the strategic and technical direction of EMVCo, the global technical body which is collectively owned by American Express, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, UnionPay and Visa. Through this programme, interested organisations, including payment card issuers, acquirers, merchants, merchant aggregators, processors, card and terminal vendors, mobile network operators, networks and their representative associations, are given the opportunity to provide input into the evolution of current and new EMV Specifications for payment technologies.

EMV stakeholders can join the programme under one, or both, of the following participation categories:

• Business Associate - participation at this level enables organisations to provide EMVCo with input on strategic business and implementation issues related to the use of the EMV Specifications. To be eligible, an organisation must have a direct business responsibility for an EMV transaction (at any point in the transaction lifecycle).

• Technical Associate - participation at this level enables organisations to provide input and receive feedback on detailed technical and operational issues connected to the EMV Specifications and related processes. Technical Associates engage with all nine of EMVCo's technical Working Groups to receive updates/provide input on their activities.

"The level of participation in the EMVCo Associates Programme, and its continued growth, demonstrates the appetite of the global payments community to engage with EMVCo and play an active role in shaping the future of the EMV Specification," comments Tac Watanabe, current Chair of the EMVCo Executive Committee.

"In line with advances in EMV chip card adoption through every region worldwide, there is a steadily increasing volume of EMV stakeholders. We therefore expect, and positively encourage, a corresponding rise in industry participation in the programme over the coming year. Stakeholder engagement is not simply desirable, but critical to EMVCo as it continues its work to develop a unified international payments framework. This need is amplified in light of EMVCo's efforts to support an advancing range of secure payment methods, technologies and acceptance environments; the ability of EMVCo to draw on a plurality of experience, expertise and knowledge will ensure that future specification enhancements and developments meet the needs of all industry stakeholders."

To complement the Associates Programme, EMVCo also offers a subscriber service, which provides advance notice of pending developments and changes, as well as an opportunity to participate in a more regular and formal dialogue with EMVCo.