PRINCETON JUNCTION, N.J.–The EMV Migration Forum reported it is expanding its focus and changing its name to the U.S. Payments Forum. The U.S. Payments Forum will continue to support the chip migration, where there is still a lot of work to be done, while also broadening its focus to other new and emerging payments technologies in the U.S., such as tokenization, card-not-present transactions, point-to-point encryption, and mobile and contactless payments, the organization said.
“The Forum is uniquely suited to address the implementation of these technologies as it is the only non-profit organization whose membership includes the whole payments ecosystem, including retailers, global payments networks, financial institutions, processors, acquirers, domestic debit networks, industry associations and industry suppliers,” the Forum said in a statement.
According to Forum director Randy Vanderhoof, “The remarkable progress we’ve seen in the U.S. chip migration to date is a direct result of the commitment and cooperation from the entire payments industry. It’s estimated that half of the cards in the market are chip cards and 1.2 million merchant locations are enabled to accept them. There are also many other payment technologies that require the same breadth of stakeholder engagement, cooperation and coordination for successful implementation in the U.S. The transition of this organization to the U.S. Payments Forum provides an opportunity to capitalize on the strong, existing organization that the networks, issuers, merchants, processors, and industry suppliers already know and trust, allowing the entire industry to come together to ensure successful implementation of these new technologies.”