Europe : A complete upgrade of the global card payment infrastructure is underway as Visa and MasterCard implements the new EVM security standard.

Smart card technology will help financial institutions combat the alarming increase in credit card frauds, which already cause losses of billions of euros annually. During the coming years over 10 million new card payment terminals capable of reading next generation EMV payment cards will be installed in Europe alone. Many of the new terminals will communicate over mobile networks instead of traditional landlines.

Tobias Ryberg ( inset above ), principal analyst at the telecom research firm Berg Insight, has recently completed a report exploring the potential for mobile data communication solutions in the retail sector. “We found that GPRS communication is the often best choice for merchants when they upgrade their POS terminals to comply with EMV. It is faster, less expensive to use, easier to install and enables remote device management.”

Tobias says the French mobile operator SFR has found that GPRS transactions only take 5 seconds to complete compared to 20 seconds when using fixed lines. Moreover he points out that traffic based data tariffs makes mobile data communication less expensive than fixed telephony. He also emphasises that installation costs are kept at a minimum as no fixed lines are required and terminal manufacturers are able to perform device management tasks remotely with OTA technology. Today GPRS payment terminals however cost twice as much as fixed line devices and Tobias believes prices must be levelled out to enable mass market penetration.

European merchants spend € 20 billion per year on card payments, of which more than € 1 billion is spent on communication services. “This is a very interesting market, where a combination of performance, security and quality of service generates a high value for the customer”, Tobias concludes to summarise his research findings.