On November 16, 2022, the heavily anticipated Mobile Payments on Commercial Off-The-Shelf (MPoC) standard was released by the PCI Security Standards Council, building on their SPoC and CPoC standards. As a pioneer in the SoftPOS ecosystem, and namely being the first solution with PIN support and the first solution provider with Full SDK certification, Yazara aims to be the early adaptor of PCI’s MPoC regulation.
We are now in the Dawn of a New Era
Why MPoC is important?
The new MPoC standard combines many aspects of the two, predecessor standards, including the entry of both PIN and contactless cardholder data (Manual Entry) on the same device. The new standard is meant to continue to address and standardize mobile payment acceptance solutions, and provide increased flexibility across acceptance, as well as the development, deployment, and maintenance of such solutions. As mentioned above, it is meant to target Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) devices such as smartphones and tablets. For avoidance of doubt, the regulation states that, “solutions that do not use COTS devices, that use devices that are intended for integration into another product, or solutions that are intended for use by the cardholder themselves using their own COTS device are not part of the scope of this standard. Similarly, MPoC does not consider or allow for solutions that are to be deployed into an unattended environment.”
Types of entities involved
The standard defines three (3) types of entities involved: MPoC Solution Provider, MPoC Software Provider, and MPoC Attestation and Monitoring Service Provider. Yazara provides a comprehensive, end-to-end solution for our customers and we typically take on all three roles in our standard offering to our customers. In other words, we provide the software packaged as a solution, including the back-end attestation and monitoring capabilities. We are going to become an MPoC Software vendor and A&M Service provider. Customers will be able to view Yazara as “Using Listed MPoC Software and A&M Service”.
Impact of MPoC on the Yazara technology
At Yazara, we view MPoC as the gold-standard and one of the most exciting and impactful developments for contactless acceptance. As a modular standard that promotes flexibility for payment solution development, additional functionality can easily be integrated and brings together mobile application development and payment acceptance. The new standard will continue to support different integration formats and hosting solutions, allowing Yazara to provide customized offerings aligned with the go-to-market strategies of our clients and prospects. We will continue to provide options for SDK, white-label, and deep-link front-end integration that seamlessly ties into existing acquiring operations of our customers. At the same time, we will be able to provide different PCI-DSS certified hosting options to fulfill local regulations and client preferences. For maximum agility and speed to market, we can also support our customers with HSM hosting and L3 certifications. As you can see, our expectations with the new MPoC standard are very high, and we hope to continue leveraging our expertise and market traction to achieve increased levels of performance and value-added features without compromising our high security levels certified by PCI.
What is next for our clients and merchants?
By providing a SoftPOS solution certified with MPoC, we anticipate significant adoption of electronic payments and increased ubiquity for SMEs globally that are not able to accept contactless payments today. We also see larger merchants looking to supplement their existing POS infrastructure to address current pain points such as queue busting and other use cases, or to reduce costs and replace some or all of their existing POS devices with SoftPOS solutions. Likewise, the modularity will promote and accelerate the transition from SoftPOS to SmartPOS, as additional value-added services can easily be integrated into the solution beyond traditional payment acceptance and provide superior customer experiences.
We hope to be one of the first, if not the first, to achieve this milestone of being MPoC certified so we can continue to support our existing customers with best-of-breed solutions and provide state-of-the-art capabilities for our future customers going forward.
