Smart Card Alliance launches white paper

The Smart Card Alliance has released a new white paper entitled Healthcare Identity Authentication and Payments Convergence: A Vision for the Healthcare Industry.

The white paper, developed by the Smart Card Alliance Health and Human Services Council, outlines a vision for healthcare identity authentication and payments convergence and provides insight into the opportunities and challenges afforded to the healthcare community as the US continues to migrate to EMV.

“As the healthcare industry examines ways to increase security and reduce fraud, stakeholders should look at leveraging smart card technology, including the smart card terminal infrastructure supporting EMV payment cards being put in place today,” says Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. “This white paper details how adopting EMV payment acceptance systems and smart card technology-based identity authentication solutions can allow healthcare organisations to increase security, decrease payment vulnerability, reduce fraud and improve workflow.”

The emergence of the EMV-enabled point of sale (POS) infrastructure enables the convergence of healthcare identity authentication and payment; that is, for the healthcare industry to use available smart card and EMV technology to add healthcare identity authentication to the payments acceptance infrastructure. By leveraging the EMV migration and consequent shift in POS technology, healthcare smart cards and the hardware infrastructure to support them are becoming a reality.