NFC Times Exclusive – Commercial standards organization EMVCo says it will publish what are considered overdue updates to its tokenization specification before the end of the year, though the organization is releasing few specific details overall, and it’s unclear whether there will be a major update to the specification this year, NFC Times has learned.

By the time the updates are published, it will likely have been well over 18 months since EMVCo–the international joint venture owned by six global payments schemes, including ­Visa and MasterCard Worldwide–published its payment tokenization specification-technical framework. That version of the specification, published in March 2014, is considered by some to be high level, and they believe follow-up specs are needed to flesh out the tokenization ecosystem. 

The major payments networks are touting what they say is or will be a global standard for payment tokens that increases security by replacing cards with tokens, as more and more payment moves to smartphones and other electronic devices.