Berlin Group focuses on tokenisation and instant (realtime) payments

The Berlin Group Plenary meeting of November 2014 has confirmed the strategy to integrate tokenisation and instant (realtime) payments into the Berlin Group specifications. The possible use and merits for integration of tokens into Berlin Group specifications will be assessed once tokenisation support for the European markets would become available from the major international card payment schemes. A separate decision will be taken later whether to integrate tokenisation into the existing ISO8583-based Berlin Group authorisation specifications or in the future ATICA-based authorisation specifications (planned to become available in the summer of 2015).

And while acknowledging the value, benefits and growing demand for instant (realtime) payment networks in different payment contexts, the Berlin Group has also identified the risks of non-interoperability arising out of different approaches, standards and attribute values in current realtime payment implementations worldwide, limiting the future interlinking of networks and applications. This concern has recently also been identified within the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB), a multi-stakeholder group chaired by the European Central Bank (ECB). Although the requirement for realtime mainly started in the mobile P2P context, the needs are also reaching out to the retail environment (both for proximity and remote payments) and will thus affect cardbased transactions as well. Consequently and in order to be ahead of market developments, the Berlin Group acknowledged and confirmed the need to investigate the implications of realtime requirements on existing Berlin Group standards and to start working on harmonised standards for realtime payments.