CHICAGO — EMVCo, a global technical body that manages Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) specifications, has released two QR-code payment specifications that should help standardize code payment methods.

According to EMVCo, the documents define QR-code payments in a manner that simplifies the development and potentially broadens the acceptance of QR-code payment solutions globally.

“With the increasing deployment of QR-code payment methods, it is important that the payments ecosystem provides a consistent experience for merchants and consumers,” said Cheryl Mish, chair, EMVCo board of managers. “Given the early stage of deployment of this emerging payment technology and growing adoption, now is the time to ensure the technology’s potential is not constrained in the future due to interoperability issues with the established payment infrastructure.”

QR, or quick response, codes are two-dimensional machine-readable barcodes that are increasingly used to facilitate mobile payments at the point-of-sale. The EMV QR Code Specification for Payment Systems supports both consumer-presented and merchant-presented code payment use cases. Consumer-presented refers to the merchant scanning the code while merchant-presented refers to the customer scanning the code with their mobile device.

San Francisco-based Visa has announced support for the specifications. EMVCo said the new specifications will enable merchants to accept QR-code payment solutions from various providers in a standardized manner. Consumers will also benefit from a more uniform experience.

The EMV QR Code Specification for Payment Systems can coexist with existing proprietary QR-code solutions. All EMV specifications are available on a royalty-free basis on the EMVCo website.

EMVCo is also developing a self-testing framework for the merchant-presented and consumer-presented specifications that allows point of interaction (POI) implementers to evaluate whether their QR codes are generated or interpreted in compliance with the EMV QR Code Specifications. EMVCo expects this to be available in early 2018.

EMVCo is the global technical body that facilitates the worldwide interoperability and acceptance of secure payment transactions by managing and evolving the EMV specifications and related testing processes. EMVCo is collectively owned by American Express, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, UnionPay and Visa, and focuses on the technical advancement of the EMV Specifications. All collective owners actively participate across all work groups within EMVCo.