The Cartes Bancaires organisation authorises Ingenico for FRv6: It’s time for contactless to become… limitless.
The Covid-19 pandemic has created a situation whereby merchants have had to reduce their use of cash, moving quickly to digital payments, and promoting their use as a safer way to pay.
This increase in electronic payment acceptance has been accompanied by a rise in customer expectations: to be able to pay with a simple ‘tap’ on a contactless-enabled terminal. Contactless is no longer a ‘nice to have’, but an essential requirement for merchants of all sizes.
The reduction of customers touching the POS has increased the number of contactless transactions. Indeed, the growth in its use is impressive, whichever country you look at. For example, in 2020, Cartes Bancaires (CB) contactless payments grew in France from 38% in Jan 2020 to 48% in 2021 (The CB Observatory, Cartes Bancaires), representing a total of 4 billion transactions per year.
Within this context, the regulation requiring the FRv6 certification is great news for the French market as it lifts the authorised contactless transaction limit, thanks to the implementation of online PIN entry. From this point, at participating merchants, consumers can simply tap their card on the terminal, regardless of the value, whenever the network scheme is leveraging this feature.
Online PIN entry is an additional feature which forms part of the FRv6 requirements whereby the terminal checks the typed PIN (for transactions of more than 50 euros) by contacting an online server.
The introduction of FRv6 also provides other benefits for banks, such as the prevention of fraud via an online credit approval check, which is now a requirement for FRv6 where previously it was only optional.
Additionally, the printing of receipts is no longer mandatory, which opens the door to the deployment of paperless receipts, where the consumer will receive a transaction receipt digitally.
Ingenico started integrating the FRv6 specifications last year and is delighted about the opportunities it will bring, which not only include software, but also key injection solutions.
I am also happy to announce that FRv6 is already supported on our Tetra payment terminals and will shortly be available on Telium 2 devices, with our Android solutions due to follow in H1 2022.
This successful release has been the outcome of a strong collaboration with our partners and customers. Because as a leader, we commit to making each one of our solutions tailored to the needs of our clients
