Fime Begins Certifying EMV Chips for India's RuPay Cards

EMV certification provider Fime is providing validation for chip-based RuPay cards in India to comply with National Payments Corporation of India requirements.

Paris-based Fime says it is the first EMV service provider to perform chip validation for certification in the RuPay payments scheme as banks in India increasingly turn to EMV payment card security. The certification process follows the NPCI's previous announcement in 2014 that it had appointed Fime to set up the RuPay certification scheme.

Six months ago, The Reserve Bank of India extended its deadline for the nation's banks to issue PIN-enabled EMV debit and credit cards for new customer accounts to Sept. 30, 2016 from the previous deadline of Sept. 1, 2015. The NPCI operates as a not-for-profit company through the Reserve Bank of India.

After two years of development, the NPCI launched its RuPay Network in May of 2014 as a less expensive payment gateway to compete against Visa and MasterCard.

RuPay cards are accepted at all ATMs in India, as well as more than 90% of the point of sale terminals and at more than 10,000 e-commerce merchants across the country.

“We are a single point of contact for Indian issuers seeking RuPay Chip V approval,” Prakash Sambandam, director at Fime India, stated in a Feb. 6 press release.

“Indian banks are responding to market demands for more convenient and secure ways to pay and we are here to support them in bringing these new products and services to market in an efficient, cost-effective, and interoperable way."

Fime has an experienced team of EMV experts "on the ground in India" to help drive the country's chip-card migration forward, Sambandam added.

As part of India's financial inclusion plan, banks have already issued 131 million RuPay magnetic stripe cards, all of which, over time, will be migrated to EMV chip cards, FIME said.

Banks migrating to EMV chip cards can use PersevalPro, a Fime personalization validation test tool developed with Barnes International. Issuers use the tool, with new RuPay libraries added, during the development process in advance of Fime's formal approval services as an extra security layer.

Fime's activity throughout the region continues to expand. Most recently, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology added Fime's Global Device platform to test the security of smartphones and other connected devices.