NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Major U.S.-based global networks, including Visa, Mastercard and American Express–hoping to keep transactions on their networks as more commerce goes online and digital–amplified their push for the Secure Remote Commerce specification, which is being drafted by their jointly owned payments specifications group, EMVCo.
In announcements the past week, including separate releases issued today by Visa and American Express, the big card networks pressed their case for the Secure Remote Commerce, or SRC, specification, which they say is designed to make online transactions using network-branded cards and card credentials more streamlined and secure. That includes trying to push network-based tokenization to millions of cards on file stored by merchants. But at least one U.S.-based merchant group remains skeptical of the move.
The Merchant Advisory Group (MAG), an interest group that lobbies for lower card transaction fees for major U.S. merchants, among other issues, repeated its contention that the push for the SRC specification and specifically for use of network-based tokenization could potentially allow the big card brands and banks to avoid routing transactions to low-cost debit networks as required by federal regulations.
