Three words every payment professional uses — and confuses. Each lives at a different point in the settlement lifecycle, under a different protocol, with radically different consequences.
Every card-present transaction begins with a question the terminal must answer before anything else: is this card genuine?
A card payment feels instantaneous. The system behind it is not.
The POS terminal has quietly become critical financial infrastructure — and most architects are still designing it like a payment endpoint.
EMV authenticates the card. PIN still helps authenticate the cardholder.
Every chip card generates a unique cryptographic proof each time you tap or insert it. That proof is why cloning a chip card’s transaction capability is effectively impossible — and why the …
PCI PTS classifies devices at the hardware level. But Visa and Mastercard classify transactions at the message level. No scheme inspects the physical terminal to determine whether it is attended or …
When a POS has no connectivity, merchants still need to accept payments. The industry uses terms like “offline transaction” and “offline processing” loosely — but in EMV terms, …
When people talk about “L3 certification,” they often treat it as a single, uniform process. It isn’t. EMV Level 3 focuses on validating integration of the acceptance device with its …
Every time you tap your phone at a terminal, add a card to an online merchant, or set up a recurring subscription, the system doesn’t use your actual card number. It uses a token — a substitute …