Vantiv: Payments Industry Moves to Speed Chip Card Acceptance

Vantiv, Inc., a leading provider of payment processing services and related technology solutions for merchants and financial institutions of all sizes, played an integral role in creating the U.S. EMV VAR Qualification Program. The program combines a chip education component with an accreditation program to streamline and simplify the testing and certification process for Value Added Resellers (VARs) and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs).

Through a coordinated, industry-wide effort with Payments Security Task Force, PCI Security Standards Council and the EMV Migration Forum, VARs and ISVs will be better equipped to integrate chip cards into small and mid-sized merchants' point-of-sales solutions in advance of the liability shifts scheduled to go into effect by major U.S. payment networks in October 2015.

The optional U.S. EMV VAR Qualification Program consists of three key components:

• An educational curriculum that provides a clear explanation of how to implement chip in the U.S. electronic payments marketplace
• A list of service providers independently accredited by the major payment networks to provide chip consulting and expertise
• A pre-qualification process run by the accredited service providers to help VARs and ISVs begin the implementation and testing process before they work with acquirers to achieve final certification

"Vantiv is the first company to successfully reach this level of EMV testing and certification to our customers through our VIABLE EMV testing platform which launched in June last year and has been used by many merchants and ISVs to successfully certify," said Patty Walters, senior vice president, EMV corporate strategy at Vantiv. "ISVs using VIABLE have full control over their EMV network validation and pre-cert activities to help give them the support they need as we near the October deadline, now less than 100 business days away."

VARs and ISVs that work with Vantiv have the ability to pre-qualify their payment solution for each of the major payment networks with an accredited service provider. The outcome will be a streamlined go-to-market process for the thousands of solutions that will be introduced as the U.S. migrates to EMV.

To learn more about the educational efforts, visit http://www.emv-connection.com/chip-education-for-vars-isvs-and-merchants/. To begin the pre-qualification process, visit https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/

Last updated: Apr 7, 2020 at 12:09 pm CDT