Ingenico Group Industry Insights from EMV expert, Allen Friedman
How will Apple Pay impact EMV in the US?
Apple Pay is a participant in EMV in the US, but they may not have a huge impact. They will have an impact on the adoption of contactless at the point of sale, and we’re already seeing that. We’ll see merchants who have NFC capable terminals that are not turned on will want to get them turned on for NFC. It definitely has given a boost to the potential of NFC at the point of sale.
Apple is essentially EMV enabled, so they are using the secure element in the phones, the best way to use EMV is on a phone, because it mimics EMV on a card. They can do EMV or magstripe emulation depending on the state of the issuer. So, whatever the issuer provides to them they can put on that phone and yes, at some point, those will all be contactless EMV transactions going through Apple Pay.
Allen Friedman is the Director of Payment Solutions at Ingenico Group, North America