I’d like to welcome all Forum members and guests to our Fall meeting in St. Louis.  St. Louis was selected for its central location so that our members who live and work in the Mid-Atlantic states and Midwest have a shorter trip to get here, and those who live on either coast are not subject to the long travel and time zone changes that are an issue at other meetings during the calendar year. 

St. Louis is also a major business center for Mastercard, which made the decision to be the Platinum Sponsor for this meeting after learning that we had selected their “home” city for this meeting.  I want to thank Mastercard for their generous sponsorship.  I’d like to thank our other meeting sponsors: Visa, meeting badge sponsor; Infineon Technologies, opening night reception sponsor; and American Express, bag insert sponsor.  This financial support helps the Forum to hold these meetings in top quality hotels (like the Westin St. Louis), and offer members some new amenities like free WiFi and a new mobile meeting application to help everyone stay connected and know where they need to be during the busy schedule over the next two days.

The Forum staff and Steering Committee have put together a great agenda. We will begin with a featured keynote speaker Ute Miller, Senior Vice President, Cyber & Intelligence Solutions North America, Mastercard, to start the morning. Another featured keynote session includes two guest speakers who will tell us about the rapid developments in faster payments – Kim Ford, Executive Director, Faster Payments Council and Tim Boike, Vice President of Payments Industry Relations, Chicago Federal Reserve. 

Another keynote speaker session on Digital Payments and New Fraud Threats will be delivered by Michael Jabbara, Visa Global Risk, on the second day. 

Agenda sessions also include cross-industry panels discussing Secure Remote Commerce implementation and the status of mobile driver’s license implementation and retailer and financial institution use cases.  In addition, there will educational breakout sessions, special interest group discussions, birds-of-a-feather sessions, our regular working committee face-to-face meetings, and great networking breaks plus the Infineon Technology-sponsored evening reception.  We invite you to get involved with one of the working committees, attend the education and group discussion sessions, or simply listen to what your industry colleagues have to say about payments. 

Thank you for being here and make sure you mark your calendars for February 24-27, 2020, when the Forum will meet again in Salt Lake City, this time in conjunction with the 2020 Payments Summit conference.  Skiers should plan to arrive early and join in the ski party being held at Solitude Ski Resort.  More details are available at www.stapayments.com.   

The U.S. Payments Forum has opened nominations for expiring Steering Committee seats.  The Forum has staggered two-year terms for the Steering Committee, with roughly half of the seats expiring each year.  The staggered term model provides a greater opportunity for new members to be elected to the Steering Committee but still retains management continuity from year-to-year.

Forum members nominate and elect representatives in different categories – issuers, merchants, acquirers/processors, domestic payment networks, industry suppliers and general members – to ensure balanced representation of all industry stakeholders.  Eight Steering Committee seats in these categories are open for nominations this year.

Nominations are due by Friday, November 22, 2019.  Forum members can find election information and nominations form on the Forum members-only site.

We encourage you to consider nominating yourself or one of your colleagues for the Steering Committee!

The Forum published an update to the Pin Bypass in the U.S. Market white paper.  The update provides clarification of PIN Entry Bypass implementation for contactless transactions and for CVM processing.

The Mobile and Contactless Payments Working Committee published a white paper, How Emerging Data Elements Can Support Mobile Wallet Use.  The white paper provides an educational resource on the data elements that are available for device-centric mobile payments to link the payment credential and device to the customer for loyalty or other retail use cases.

The Communications and Education Working Committee hosted a well-attended webinar, Contactless POS Experience Best Practices, on October 8th, with over 135 people attending.  The webinar outlined best practices to improve the consumer experience at the POS, presenting content from the recently published white paper.  

The Testing & Certification Working Committee published a white paper, Options for Reducing Level 3 EMV Certification Time for Retailer Systems using Electronic Payment Servers.  The white paper discusses solutions to help reduce the implementation time and effort required for the automatic fuel dispenser (AFD) community to meet the October 2020 fraud liability shift deadline. 

The Testing & Certification Working Committee published a white paper, EMV Level 3 Contactless Certification Recommended Solutions to Reduce Deployment Time.  In this white paper, the Working Committee identified possible testing and certification challenges to implementation and deployment of Level 3 (L3) certified contactless implementations for merchants and proposed possible solutions. 

The ATM Working Committee published an update to the white paper, Guidelines for Contactless ATM Transactions.  The update adds the EMVCo Contactless Symbol and includes other minor updates.

ATM Working Committee

The ATM Working Committee is looking forward to meeting in-person at the November Forum Member Meeting where they will be discussing topics for new projects.

CNP Fraud Working Committee

The CNP Fraud Working Committee is actively working on a white paper that will be a primer on EMV 3DS 2.0.  Progress is underway to expand the charter for the working committee.  Additionally, progress continues to be made on a white paper that will outline fraud prevention pathways. 

Communications and Education Working Committee

The Communications and Education Working Committee held a webinar in October on best practices for the consumer experience at the contactless point of sale.  Click here to watch the webinar, if you missed it!  Additionally, work on producing an additional webinar series on dual-interface card personalization is underway.

Mobile and Contactless Payments Working Committee

The Mobile and Contactless Payments Working Committee recently published a white paper on How Emerging Data Elements Can Support Mobile Wallet Uses Cases.   Additionally, the committee is working on a number of projects including:

• A project that is compiling a glossary of mobile standards
• An educational resource on authentication methods for mobile in-app and remote payment transactions 

Petro Working Committee

The Petro Working Committee has continued their work on requirements for different cardholder verification methods (CVMs) at unattended terminals during the Atlanta in-person meetings and is looking forward to discussing new topics with the committee while in St. Louis this week.

Testing and Certification Committee

The Testing and Certification Working Committee recently published Options for Reducing Level 3 EMV Certification Time for Retailer Systems using Electronic Payment Servers, a white paper that discusses solutions to help reduce the implementation time and effort required for the October 2020 fraud liability shift.

Additionally, a white paper on EMV Level 3 Contactless Certification Recommended Solutions to Reduce Deployment Time was published in July.

Transit Contactless Open Payments Working Committee 

The Transit Contactless Open Payments Working Committee is working on a customer terminology / best practices guide for contactless open payments in the transit industry. 

For more information on Working Committee projects that are in process, please contact Devon Rohrer, drohrer@uspaymentsforum.org.