SEPA-FAST Specification Finalised - One Card Payment Terminal for Europe

30-03-2010

In a common effort to offer new opportunities for retailers and acquirers across Europe and to make the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) a reality for card payments major players in the European card payments industry have joined to deliver the first common standard for payment terminals.

Following a public consultation phase since mid of 2009, the work on the standard Financial Application Specification for SCF Compliant EMV Terminals (SEPA-FAST) has been completed now and it is now as an open standard publicly available at the CIR TWG website

SEPA-FAST has been developed by the CIR Technical Working Group (CIR TWG) in response to European Payments Council (EPC) initiatives and is the first technical specification which is fully in line with the business and functional requirements in the EPC SEPA Cards Standardisation "Volume". The CIR TWG has collected all comments received during the public consultation phase and a summary on the comments and their resolution in the standard has been published together with the new standard.

The CIR TWG is an initiative set up to produce common standards for cards and terminals for financial payment systems. As Dutch active participant, Equens SE has been involved in this initiative since 2003. For further information please visit the CIR TWG website.