EMVCo, the EMV standards body owned by American Express, JCB, MasterCard and Visa, has published a new white paper on its work to securely standardize the deployment of contactless mobile payments.

Free to download from EMVCo’s Web site, the document is intended for all stakeholders working to deliver contactless mobile payments – particularly those that are new to the payments market.

Patricia Partelow, EMVCo executive committee chair, comments: “EMVCo has been working over the last few years to ensure that its specifications and testing processes meet the requirements of this emerging payment environment and the development of this white paper delivers a full update on the activity. The document also aims to enhance the understanding of EMV technology among industry stakeholders.”

In 2007, EMVCo released two documents outlining areas that required its involvement in the mobile payments arena: “The Role and Scope of EMVCo in Standardizing the Mobile Payments Infrastructure,” and “Technical Issues and Position Paper.”

The status of both these issues is provided within this recent white paper: first, EMVCo’s work to coordinate the payment industry’s efforts in the development life-cycle for contactless mobile payments standards to align with the pace at which today’s mobile devices are conceived, designed and brought to market. Second, EMVCo identified a number of technical infrastructure issues associated with enabling contactless payments via mobile handsets that required resolution before meaningful steps forward could be made.

EMVCo has also called on industry players to engage in the EMVCo Associates Program, which is designed to offer a participation framework that enables companies to support market convergence and have a more active role in guiding EMVCo’s strategic and technical direction.

“EMVCo is continually looking to enhance the EMV Specifications to meet the evolving technical requirements of the advancing payment community,” added Partelow. “By understanding the needs of all players, including mobile network operators, handset manufacturers and other members of the mobile ecosystem, we can work to effectively and efficiently standardize the mobile payments landscape and deliver an interoperable and scalable payment environment.”