Some weeks ago a question was asked about payment applications, and a long discussion ensued. I think I killed it stone dead when I wrote that the card terminal for financial transactions via a PC had got to be low cost ($50 for home use). Now Visa have launched V2.0 of their Open Platform card spec, and V1.0 of their terminal spec. They will not yet answer any questions put to them by banks, but it looks very much as if they want it to be possible for us to have low cost terminals so that we can have 'anytime anywhere' access to a 'wide variety of financial and non-financial applications'. Therefore, does anyone know if Visa really have specified a solution to the problem of the 'customer not present' transaction? This would have to be a low cost way for the card to guarantee the transaction, even where the transaction is over the Internet or at a self-service kiosk (e.g. when purchasing a train ticket). It looks very much as if this type of transaction was not included in the brief given to the developers of the EMV debit/credit application, but the likes of Jim Russell have clearly been looking into these problems, so much so that they say they have patents on some of the ways to solve the problem. Here in the UK we see several proposals for multi-app cards, particularly for transport and city or town cards. Some of these schemes are trying to make decisions about card and terminal technology now, and a consultancy (MVA) has been given a contract to advise the UK govt on a 'National Specification for an Interoperable Transport Smartcard Ticketing System'. And of course Amex has just come out with their Multiple Application Framework, aimed at providing an operating system extension software layer to look after a shared database, with a suitable security scheme, within the card. There are even some cards with hardware memory management now available (STM ST19, Philips SmartXA). Have we now got the makings of a multi-application card that can bridge the financial and non-financial markets? Javacard, Amex Framework, Visa Open Platform making it all possible? OCF to help with implementing in PCs? And maybe EMV will now decide to become ISO compliant... I'm hoping that we can get some support from Europay this week, at their Vendor Forum (1st/2nd June, Brussels). Regards Peter Tomlinson Iosis, 4 Sommerville Road, Bristol BS7 9AA, UK Phone +44 117 924 9231, fax +44 117 924 9233 Visit the OpenCard Framework's WWW site at http://www.opencard.org/ for access to documentation, code, presentations, and OCF announcements. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the OCF Mailing list, send a mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" with the word "unsubscribe" in the BODY of the message.
