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Education

into a single "block" or framework for ported, including signature, location, asynchronous processing, real-time au-
future use, developers' efforts could thorization, store-and-forward environments, and direct integration with card
be reduced by 40 to 60 percent and brands.
their EMV transition accelerated.
Loyalty framework
As one payments executive put it, Merchants treasure their loyalty programs and can brook no added delays or
"It's not just a cost play – it's revenue, processing complications with their EMV transition. No matter what kind of
too. Every day we spend writing new program is involved – whether a cross-band "coalition" loyalty card like Plenti
code is a day we go without the rev- or a single-merchant but multilocation card, processing post-EMV must be
enue we're building for." seamless. A single loyalty framework exists as a block on which customized
Mobile POS framework business layers can be added.
Consider, for example, a company If your company's EMV transition is still consuming resources and time,
seeking to conform its mobile POS so- consider seeking out existing frameworks. They can speed up your transition,
lution to EMV standards. It needs to save you money and give you confidence that your resulting development
accommodate both Android and iOS conforms to EMV standards.
devices. It needs to interface with the
EMV card readers in a secure way. For EMV, as in other intensive development, frameworks prove the philosophers'
And it needs to route transactions to point: others have struggled and learned so that you don't have to.
a back-end processing switch. Solv-
ing for each of those challenges, one Bob Olson is Senior Vice President, Financial Services, and Naga Jagadeesh is Vice President,
by one, takes extensive research, ex- Payment and Loyalty Solutions, for U.S.-based ThoughtFocus, the consulting, software engineering
ploring hardware, encryption, devel-
opment and testing options. Instead, and business process management firm. They can be reached at bob.olson@thoughtfocus.com
those needs can be built into a single and naganandj@thoughtfocus.com.
block that a user can install in almost
plug-and-play fashion.

Basic acquiring framework

Or take the next phase of the EMV
transaction lifecycle: routing the
transaction to a gateway or rout-
ing mechanism. No matter how the
transaction comes in – EMV, card
swipe, ecommerce or other means, it
needs to be recognized as such, con-
verted to the right format and pushed
out again to the right processing for-
mat on the back end. It also needs to
perform basic validation tasks (for ex-
ample, whether the card is valid, ex-
pired or stolen). Thus this framework,
designed for small volumes, while ba-
sically a conduit, also provides intel-
ligence about the transaction routing
and validity. Consolidating all these
capabilities into a single framework
can cut in half the original develop-
ment effort and time.
High-volume acquiring
framework
Similar but more robust frameworks
exist for high-volume environments
(hundreds of transactions per sec-
ond), loads and where extensive user
information must be captured and re-

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