NI announced today that UL, the global safety science leader, has added NI’s Contactless Test Station to its mobile payment test services portfolio. NI’s Contactless Test Station will enable UL to offer their customers test services according to the latest EMVCo test specification, including EMV® Level 1 Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) payment testing on consumer mobile devices, a specification that describes the minimum required functionality to assure the optimal operation and interoperability of the devices, independent of the application used.
Isabelle Noblanc, vice president and general manager, of UL’s Identity Management and Security division, said: “Companies developing contactless payment systems that help power the world’s economies must innovate with safety guiding the way. As a leading global safety authority, UL will continue to embrace advances that will help our customers drive their technologies safely into the marketplace.”
Targeted to payment device manufacturers, payment systems designers and teams within financial organizations responsible for implementing the financial applications of payment devices, the test specifically evaluates enabled consumer mobile devices as a terminal for contactless payment. This this technology brings the possibility to pay for purchases wherever the customer is in the retail environment – making obsolete the need for customers queuing to do checkout and pay on static payment terminals.
Stéphane Czeck, MKT director for NFC and Wireless Charging at NI added: “Proposing such an innovative test tool to the market, and having it immediately adopted by one of the leaders in the regulatory compliance test laboratory market is why we are in the EMV L1 test tool business. Our numerous common customers from the mobile phone industry will for sure be delighted about this news as it will allow them to prepare in better conditions in their own laboratory the official type approval session, and therefore to accelerate their entrance on the market with this new technology.“
The scalable character of NI’s offering will make it easy for customers who already own NI NFC test equipment to upgrade their system with EMV L1 COTS test coverage. The Contactless Test Station, the EMVCo antenna reference kit, and the manipulation robot can all be re-used to perform those new test methods – making NI a real long-time partner to all the payment industry.