Ingenico Group Sunday announced a new partner program intended to help accelerate EMV and NFC payment acceptance in unattended environments, according to a press release. The company made the announcement at the annual National Retail Federation trade show in New York City. 

The Ingenico Group Unattended Partner Program is designed for kiosk providers, value-added solution providers, system integrators and gateway providers who offer unattended products and want to protect their customers from post-EMV deadline fraud liability, while enabling consumers to pay using the latest payment methods, including Apple Pay and Android Pay.

Inaugural partners include: Creditcall, Flex, FreedomPay, IBM Commercial Services, Image Manufacturing Group, INTOUCH, KIOSK Information Systems, Livewire Digital, Nanonation, Olea Kiosks, Inc., Scan Source, Tempus Technologies, TrustCommerce, Unattended Card Payments and Zivelo.

Ingenico said in the announcement unattended terminals are becoming increasingly common, and are often found in kiosk format – examples include high-end vending for items such as electronics and cosmetics, retail pharmacy dispensers, ticketing for public transportation, unattended parking systems, and government services such as driver’s license renewals. The company insists the unattended space has been slow to adopt EMV and NFC largely because of the complex partner ecosystem involved in integrating all of the components required for complete, secure solutions tailored to each customer’s environment.

The Ingenico Group Unattended Partner Program provides participants with:

• Access to the latest PCI-certified, NFC and EMV-enabled original equipment manufacturer (OEM) unattended payment acceptance solutions – Ingenico Group's iSelf Series
• A complete development suite, including hardware and software integration kits
• A dedicated support team and account managers
• Access to Ingenico Group's sales channels and existing customer base
• Co-marketing opportunities
• Connections to other partners in the unattended ecosystem

"The unattended space involves many partners that need to work closely together, and updating payment acceptance options in this complex environment has been a challenge," said Greg Burch, vice president of strategic initiatives for the U.S. at Ingenico Group. "Ingenico Group's new Unattended Partner Program was designed to help foster cooperation and integration among partners so that they can offer turnkey unattended solutions for a wide variety of use cases with secure EMV and NFC payment acceptance built in. The fact that our OEM unattended solutions use the same Telium operating system as our mobile solutions and smart terminals allows our partners to deliver seamless payment acceptance throughout the enterprise."