EMV L2 (1) — Basic

Introduction to the EMV Organization

The EMV standard was jointly initiated and developed by the three major international card organizations — Europay (later acquired by MasterCard), MasterCard, and Visa — to guide the migration of payment cards from magnetic stripe to smart IC cards. It is a financial payment standard based on IC cards and has become a globally recognized unified standard.

In February 1999, the three major card organizations established EMVCo, an organization responsible for managing, maintaining, and improving the EMV smart (chip) card specifications.

EMVCo provides EMV Level 1 and EMV Level 2 certifications.

Certification Specifications

EMV Level 1

• Accept card insertion without causing mechanical damage.
• Provide power supply and clock signals without causing electrical damage.
• Identify supported protocols and establish communication with the card.
• Correctly reset and re-use the card.

EMV Level 2

• Define the application requirements for debit and credit card transactions.
• Define application processing specifications between the card and the terminal.
• Ensure terminal application software can access the card application.
• Allow terminal application software to read the list of applications on the card.
• Define cardholder verification methods, such as PIN verification.

EMV Specifications Download

The EMV specifications can be downloaded at: http://www.emvco.com/

The following content is derived from notes taken while studying these four specifications. Since my work mainly involves Level 2 and Level 3, this series of notes will generally not cover Level 1. However, the downloaded specifications do include Level 1, which you can study on your own.

Note: It is recommended to first read Chapter 12 (Application Selection) of Book 1, then proceed to Book 3, followed by Book 4 and Book 2. Book 2 focuses on security and key management, such as the detailed process of offline data authentication.

EMV Transaction Flow Diagram

The steps inside the green boxes indicate that these four processes can be executed in no particular order.