Community

Thanks Matt.  You're right - that "Innovations" article on M-PESA is excellent - by far the most comprehensive analysis I've seen.  It tends to reinforce my suspicion that the success of M-PESA is driven mostly by factors specific to Kenya itself - not just the lack of a robust banking infrastructure, but also patterns of urban-rural migration, the dominance of Safaricom in Kenya, and very clever marketing and management by Safricom.  Interesting that similar schemes seem to have been relatively unsuccessful not just in Tanzania but also South Africa.

One year sounds about right.  Mag stripe has just got to go. 

Just like the UK experience!  Recommended solution is to deploy Remote Chip Authentication, coupled with 3D Secure.  It seems to be working here.

Nice blog Steve.  A "chip-only" Europe, coupled with Remote Chip Authentication, sounds sensible to me, and as you say, would put further pressure on the US to adopt EMV.  Personally I think this is inevitable and will happen sooner than you think.  The current situation is unsustainable and the industry has advanced sufficiently for migration to be much easier than it was for pioneers like the UK.

Yes, this is potentially a hugely significant development.  I haven't seen the RFP either but it sounds interesting.  I wonder if they've considered adding remote chip authentication (RCA) functionality to the EMV chip cards.  That would seem to be a natural step to enable DoD staff to logon to DoD systems securely from wherever they are in the world.  I know the UK MOD have deployed such a scheme based on MasterCard's CAP technology.

Ketharaman - that's one of my favourite Bill Gates quotes too!  I use it all the time to interpret the progress of EMV chip migration (very slow from a 2 year perspective - very fast from a 10 year perspective).  In this case it looks as if the increased security of chip-enabled credit cards has finally persuaded German people that they're safe to use, as Felicitas points out.

Nice blog David.

I must say I'm becoming increasingly dubious about the whole PCI DSS bandwagon.  At a very simplistic level, if the US embraces EMV soon, which I believe is inevitable, and the whole world moves to chip and PIN, then I can't see the point in spending gazillions to protect data like the PAN, which is, after all, embossed on the front of my card for all the world to see!

Very neat!  This could be a winner - especially as cheques are phased out in the UK.

So the US market is finally beginning to see sense.  With Wal-Mart behind it, this must surely mean a massive migration to EMV chip.  Totally agree with the insistence on full Chip and PIN - chip and signature has always seemed to me to be missing the point.  There is also a huge opportunity for the US banking and payments industry to learn from experience in the rest of the world and embed added value functionality into their EMV infrastructure from the outset - remote chip authentication, EMV contactless, multi-payment cards etc - all starting to take off in a big way over here but as add-ons rather than fully integrated from the start.

You make a good point Stephen.  Remote Chip Authentication via EMV chip payment cards in simple personal readers is now widely deployed for secure e-banking in Europe, and we are just beginning to see the same approach being used to extend 3D Secure authentication of e-commerce transactions, with deployment by major banks in the Nordics, Benelux and the UK.

I get the feeling that one way or another the US is finally going to adopt EMV chip, sooner rather than later, and when it happens it will happen quickly.