V PAY: France and Greece are first countries to accept V PAY
London, 08 July, 2005
Visa Europe has announced the successful completion of the first domestic and cross border V PAY transactions in both Greece and France. Natexis Paiements, part of the Groupe Banques Populaires, in France and Emporiki Bank in Greece were the acquirers for the first V PAY transactions, completed using standard EMV chip and PIN processing methods.Jon Prideaux, Executive Vice President, Visa Europe commented, "To those that say V PAY is just a concept, I say that these live domestic and international transactions show that V PAY is a reality. To banks developing their SEPA debit strategy, I say come and talk to us."
"This is an incredibly important step to developing a European-wide acceptance for V PAY, that delivers a truly European debit solution that helps to support and achieve Europe's internal market for payments," continued Mr. Prideaux.
The first transaction took place in Athens at Hondos, a leading Greek department store on 16th June, followed by Paris on 26th June at French sight seeing bus travel service, L'openTour. Both transactions were completed using cards issued by Alpha Bank in Greece.
"V PAY is the competitive debit choice for a 21st century Europe. This demonstrates that V PAY acceptance is a reality for Europe with unsurpassed de facto acceptance at 2 million EMV Visa terminals at merchants across Europe," added Mr Prideaux.
V PAY is always chip, always PIN, which means an optimal level of security and issuer control with minimal fraud losses. It builds on the investment of the European banks in EMV infrastructure across Europe, and provides local and European governance.
Validation tests have taken place with 21 acquirers across 12 key markets in Europe including B&S Card Service GmbH in Germany, Luottokunta in Finland and euroConex in Ireland.
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Some details about V PAY
- Is an EMV chip and PIN only debit product
- Is compatible with local market account numbering structures supporting 16-19 digit account numbers beginning with 4, 5 or 6. That means issuers, acquirers and merchants in those markets can use their existing systems and infrastructure with minimal changes
- Can be co-badged with domestic debit brands during the transition to the SEPA type product requested by the European Central Bank and the European Payment Council are calling for
- Option to carry the PLUS mark enabling global access to ATMs
- Is compatible with all EMV compliant terminals.
