These guidelines, published by The European Payments Council, offer a description of the mobile contactless payments ecosystem today and the stakeholders involved, to provide a clear understanding of the technology available and its deployment within the market.

These guidelines build on EPC’s previous work to focus on the interoperability of processes in the contactless m-payment application lifecycle management, when the m-payment application is stored on one of three secure element (SE) types: UICC (known as SIM card), embedded SE in the mobile phone itself or a removable secure micro SD card inserted in the mobile phone. The document also deals with aspects of a mobile contactless payment transaction and the technical and security requirements.

The guidelines will enable the quick development and implementation of mobile solutions by promoting the use of open standards; describing the roles of stakeholders; outlining the position of the EPC in relation to other industry bodies; and recommending an adequate level of security for the whole mobile payment value chain in order to establish confidence in this environment.

After  an analysis of specifications and guidelines from industry bodies such as EMVCo, GlobalPlatform and Mobey Forum to ensure that existing work in this area was leveraged, a preliminary version of the EPC’s ‘Mobile Contactless SEPA Card Payments Interoperability Implementation Guidelines’ was made available for public consultation in April 2011. Following the evaluation of the feedback received, the EPC publishes the final version of this document in November 2011.

Download the full document (pdf format)