EMVCo, the technical body that manages the EMV payment specifications, has put out a draft framework for using verifiable digital credentials in card-based payment authentication and is collecting industry feedback through July 23. The work is an attempt to define a payment-specific credential that can be provisioned, requested, and verified consistently across different payment networks, wallets, and verification systems.
The draft, called the EMV Digital Payment Credential Specification Schema Framework, focuses first on the schema, meaning the data a Digital Payment Credential contains and how that data is structured. EMVCo describes the Digital Payment Credential as a payment-specific form of verifiable digital credential, the same broad category used for digital representations of physical documents such as an identity card, a driver’s license, or a proof of age. Those credentials are typically held in a smartphone wallet, can be presented in person or online, and are verified cryptographically, and EMVCo says they are gaining traction across digital identity ecosystems. The body said it is also investigating functionality to support payment initiation.
EMVCo’s argument is that verifiable credentials risk fragmenting if different groups structure them differently for the same use case. A common Digital Payment Credential, it said, would address card payment authentication along with device binding, cross-domain usage, and dynamic linking, while supporting privacy controls. The effort is led by EMVCo’s Digital Identity and Payments Task Force, which the body says is engaging the hundreds of industry stakeholders that take part as EMVCo Associates and Subscribers, and is being coordinated with the FIDO Alliance, the OpenID Foundation, the OpenWallet Foundation, W3C, and the WE BUILD Consortium. The draft framework follows review by EMVCo Associates and is now open for initial public comment, with the body inviting stakeholders to weigh in on the technical and strategic questions shaping digital identity and payments.
The consultation lands amid wider work to bring verifiable credentials into payments and identity, from a World Bank proposal for a verifiable credential framework for portable digital payment identities to commercial efforts such as a partnership between IDEMIA Public Security and Proof on privacy-preserving verifiable digital credentials.
“Emerging digital identity technologies have the potential to promote more trusted and convenient card-based payments for consumers and businesses, but realising these benefits at scale requires global interoperability,” said Patrik Smets, EMVCo executive committee chair.
Sources: EMVCo
–
By the ID Tech Editorial Team
