PCI publishes MPoC standard to support evolution of contactless payment acceptance solutions

The PCI Security Standards Council has published a flexible modular standard for accepting payments on a smartphone or other commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) mobile device that supports a variety of payment acceptance channels and customer verification methods including software point-of-sale (sPOS) contactless acceptance solutions.

The PCI Mobile Payments on COTS (MPoC) standard incorporates elements of the existing PCI Software-based PIN entry on COTS (SPoC) and PCI Contactless Payments on COTS (CPoC) standards but also aims to provide flexibility not only in how payments are accepted, but in how COTS-based payment acceptance solutions can be developed, deployed and maintained.

Many of the requirements within the standard will be familiar to those who were already working with the existing PCI SPoC and PCI CPoC standards; however, MPoC is structured to provide a separation of the ‘technical’ or ‘development’ aspects from the ‘operational’ aspects.