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A group consisting of major European merchant acquirers and card schemes, along with the major point-of-sale-terminal makers, is working on a standard that would make POS terminals interchangeable and enable merchants to easily change their bankcard acquirers. The EPAS consortium hopes to adopt bylaws and formally launch a standards body to develop, maintain and promote the standard by early next year. EPAS, short for Electronic Protocols Application Software, would set standards for the way POS terminals communicate with merchant acquirers and how acquirers manage the security keys and parameters in their terminals. It also would set a specification for the link between POS terminals and cash registers. The standard would help banks comply with mandates for a Single Euro Payments Area for cards, although the banking organization charged with implementing SEPA considers a system in which POS terminals and acquirers are interchangeable unrealistic. At present, terminals in one country in Europe cannot process transactions through acquirers from another. They also cannot download new security keys or parameters–such as requiring more-frequent online authorizations–from acquirers in different countries or even from one terminal manufacturer to another. And messaging protocols between terminals and acquirer host systems differ throughout Europe. "What we intend to do is enable a merchant, a big multinational merchant, to do business using one protocol and be able to switch from one acquirer to another because the protocol will be the same," says William Vanobberghen, EPAS project manager with Groupement des Cartes Bancaires, France's national banking card scheme and a leader in EPAS. "The opportunity is for merchants to choose one acquirer for Europe," he tells CardLine Global sister publication Cards&Payments. That is the vision of SEPA, which European Union officials are mandating. The EPAS consortium was formed in 2006 with the SEPA mandates in mind. But Vanobberghen says EPAS could make multinational acquiring and interchangeable POS terminals a reality not just in Europe but worldwide. Though he and Cartes Bancaires promoted the EPAS initiative last week at the Cartes & IDentification conference and exhibition in Paris, some observers are not convinced national schemes such as Cartes Bancaires and acquirers are eager to open their domestic markets to outside competition. That would be required, however, under SEPA.
