In 2008, EMVCo announced that EMV certifications would now have an expiry date, necessitating new EMVCo Level 2 certification for new customer rollouts every 3 years. The intention of this change was to ensure that the EMV standard maintained interoperability and new installations were not being rolled out with dated and superseded solutions.

STS will continue to be the world's leading provider of EMV Level 2 kernels through our award winning solution, Emvelink. We have continued to update our kernel to the latest specifications with the latest approval being received in December 2008 with the VeriFone Vx810 on EMV plan 4.1e.

Whilst the proposed changes should not impact on existing STS retail customers (expired kernels are only relevant for new customers or installations requiring new bank accreditation), STS has committed to ensuring our kernels are kept up to date to the latest EMVCo standards as part of our standard support and maintenance agreements.

STS, working with partners such as Fujitsu, HTEC, Ingenico and VeriFone, will continue to support all PIN pads required by our partners and customers as well as ensuring that the needs of multi-national retailers are met through different EMV Level 2 configurations. We will also endeavour to support the latest PIN pads from these partners, including working with new PIN pads from our partners.

STS will contact all existing partners to provide a more detailed overview of the impact of EMV Level 2 certifications.

For further information on Emvelink, call STS +44 (0)20 8680 0252, email info@stspayments.com or visit our website at http://www.stspayments.com