ATLANTA & SAN JOSE, Calif. -- First Data, a leading payment technology company, and Verifone, a leading provider for secure payment acceptance, have announced a partnership to help U.S. merchants reduce exposure to large-scale consumer payment data breaches and expedite merchant acceptance of EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa)-enabled credit and debit cards.
Large-scale theft of consumer payment data from merchants' integrated point-of-sale (POS) systems is among the biggest challenges facing the payments industry. Another challenge comes from the significant number of merchants POS integrators and other payment providers looking to certify new EMV-capable devices in response to the mandated fraud liability shift from bank to merchant in October 2015.
"As we have seen over the past few years, data breaches have become widespread and undermine consumer confidence and privacy. While EMV acceptance in the marketplace will strengthen data protection, it creates a burden on merchants and those that serve them," said Guy Chiarello, president of First Data, Atlanta. "This partnership with Verifone furthers our objective of working with the leading payment technology providers to benefit merchants and their customers."
To address this burden, First Data will now offer Verifone's Secure Commerce Architecture (SCA) solution to its U.S. merchant clients who use Verifone equipment within an integrated point of sale (IPOS) system. SCA helps to solve the difficulties of EMV compliance by eliminating the flow of consumer payment data into the IPOS. Payment data will also now flow through First Data's TransArmor data protection solution, enabling encrypted delivery directly to First Data from the Verifone payment terminal.
"First Data's support of SCA is a significant step in easing the burden on merchants of data breaches, and the related complexity from EMV acceptance in the U.S.," said Paul Galant, CEO of San Jose, Calif.-based Verifone. "This partnership will enable First Data merchants in the U.S. that use Verifone terminals to experience the benefit of an integrated POS, while enhancing the safety and soundness of the payments industry."
"Getting EMV into the payment ecosystem and protecting customer payment data are both crucial to the establishment of a secure payment space," said Thad Peterson, senior analyst for Aite Group. "By working together to increase adoption of the Verifone Secure Commerce Architecture solution, Verifone and First Data are taking important steps to simplify EMV implementation and remove sensitive data from merchant systems. It's a sound approach that provides significant benefits for merchants and, ultimately, their customers."
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