The U.S. Payments Forum has formed a Mobile and Contactless Payments Working Committee to explore the opportunities and challenges, identify possible approaches, and develop practical implementation guidance and best practices for the variety of mobile and contactless payments product being implemented in the U.S., according to a press release.

This new working committee comes as part of the U.S. Payments Forum's expanded priorities to address a variety of new and emerging payments technologies that protect the security of, and enhance opportunities for, payment transactions within the U.S. In addition to contactless and mobile payments and the ongoing migration to chip technology, some of the other topic areas the forum plans to address include tokenization, card-not-present security solutions, and encryption.

"Just as we are doing with the U.S. EMV chip migration, our goal as an organization is to provide concrete, usable guidance to make new and emerging payment technologies a reality in the U.S.," said Randy Vanderhoof, director of the U.S. Payments Forum. "With the U.S. Payments Forum being the only forum bringing together all the payments industry stakeholders including merchants, issuers and the mobile community, the Mobile and Contactless Working Committee is uniquely positioned to develop implementation guidance and help the payments industry to be better equipped to implement contactless payment technologies."

Like other forum working committees, the Mobile and Contactless Working Committee will gather input from all payments industry stakeholders and provide education and guidance through industry briefings to members, and published resources such as white papers, implementation guidance, webinars, seminars, workshops, infographics, and a variety of other resource formats.

Some of the topics the working committee will focus on include:

• Implementation challenges across a variety of merchant use cases and segments, such as in-store, quick service restaurant, transit and others
• Implementation of multiple mobile payment technologies (e.g., NFC, Bluetooth, QR code) and wallet approaches
• Implementation of multiple payment security technologies, such as tokenization, encryption and new consumer identity verification approaches
• Implications of mobile payments on the customer experience

The Mobile and Contactless Working Committee will hold its first in-person working session at the U.S. Payments Forum member meeting on December 8-9 in Coral Gables, Florida. Mobile operators and wallet providers are invited to take advantage of a limited time offer to join the forum and learn how other payments industry stakeholders have benefited from membership.