SEPA-FAST

Major players in the European card payments industry have joined together to deliver the first common standard for payment terminals, the "Financial Application Specification for SCF Compliant EMV Terminals" (SEPA-FAST). SEPA-FAST is a big step to making the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) a reality for card payments and offers new opportunities for Retailers and Acquirers across Europe.

SEPA-FAST is based on EMV Chip and PIN technology and describes unambiguously the financial application on a terminal which is compliant to the SEPA Cards Framework (SCF) of the European Payments Council (EPC) and also meets the functional requirements in the EPC SEPA Cards Standardisation "Volume" Book of Requirements. SEPA-FAST has been developed with the objective of:

·        Supporting a uniform "look and feel" of transactions from the cardholder’s perspective

·        Reducing the risks of interoperability obstacles between applications

·        Enabling an open market for EMV-based components

·        Serving as the basis for a "one-stop shopping" for terminal testing and mutual recognition of type approval

SEPA-FAST is being developed by the CIR Technical Working Group in response to EPC initiatives and is the first technical specification which is fully in line with the business and functional requirements in the EPC SEPA Cards Standardisation "Volume".

SEPA-FAST is not intended to challenge or reassess the EMV specification, but to propose a common implementation of this specification and to add SEPA specific aspects to it.

SEPA-FAST consists of:

·        The detailed technical specification of the functions, processing steps, display messages and receipts needed to perform Card Services

·        A top-level flow describing each of the Card Services and detailed flows describing the functions and processing steps needed to process the Card Services

·        The Data Dictionary giving the technical description of the data elements used in the technical specification

SEPA-FAST will be delivered in two parts:

·        Part 1, for the POS Environment

·        Part 2, for the ATM

SEPA-FAST - Status of Work

SEPA-FAST Part 1: Version 1.2 Released in August 2011

Version 1.2 of SEPA-FAST Part 1 covers the Attended POS Environment and the Card Services

·        Payment (also with options of Cashback, Increased Amount)

·        Refund

·        Cancellation

·        Pre-Authorisation, Update Pre-Authorisation, Payment Completion

·        Cash Advance

Version 1.2 of SEPA-FAST Part 1 describes Technology Selection, Application Selection and Application Profile Selection as well as EMV Chip processing of all these Card Services and magnetic stripe and Manual Entry processing of the Card Services Payment, Refund and Cancellation. Version 1.2 of SEPA-FAST Part 1 is available since August 2011 and can be downloaded from "Documents" on this site.

SEPA-FAST Part 1: Version 2.0 Released in December 2012

Version 2.0 of SEPA-FAST Part 1 covers the Attended POS Environment and the Card Services

·        Payment (also with options of Cashback, Increased Amount)

·        Refund

·        Cancellation

Version 2.0 of SEPA-FAST Part 1 integrates contact and contactless in one specification, based on the contactless architecture defined by the EMV specifications, including EMV Entry Point, and applying it to both contact and contactless processing. Version 2 of SEPA-FAST Part 1 describes for the Attended POS Environment in detail the processing of contact, magnetic stripe and Manual Entry processing transactions and, in additioen, allows the usage of all four contactless EMV kernels.

Version 2.0 of SEPA-FAST Part 1 is available since December 2012 and can be downloaded from "Documents" on this site.

SEPA-FAST Part 1: Version 3.0 under Development

Version 3.0 of SEPA-FAST Part 1 is currently under development by the CIR TWG. Version 3.0 will be based on Version 2.0 and will also cover the Unattended POS Environment and the Card Services Deferred Payment, Pre-Authorisation, Update Pre-Authorisation, Payment Completion and Cash Advance.