EPAS

EPAS (Electronic Protocols Application Software) is a non-commercial cooperation initiative launched in Europe which aims at developing a series of data protocols to be applied in a point of interaction (POI) environment.

The project intends to address the three following protocols :

The main objectives common to the three protocols are:

A current barrier to the development of the POI market is due to the existing fragmented market for this type of equipment, especially in Europe, where each country has adopted its own requirements and rules in terms of security and functions to be implemented in POI devices.

Today's situation is the following one :

The goal of the EPAS project is therefore the issuance of technical specifications and the development of open software for three major protocols to be used in a Point of Interaction environment. The protocols enable a POI to communicate with external devices and hosts. An additional aim of the project is to validate - through demonstrators - the technical feasibility of the three protocols developed in the framework of the project.

The project is to be considered as a cornerstone of another initiative ("ERIDANE") initiated at the European level with several partners belonging to the EPAS Consortium. The aim of the ERIDANE project is to achieve a common set of standards for hardware and software components to be used in point-of-sales retail environments. As such, EPAS complements adequately the work carried out by the ERIDANE project which essentially focuses on the inner structure of a POI terminal used at retailers' point of sales locations.

With the development of specifications, the project intends to issue a new generation of open standards to be internationally deployed by equipment manufacturers, with a strong support from the banking and card payment industries as well as retailers, solutions providers and users. The consortium is made of large industrial organisations, small and medium enterprises, card payment organisations, solution providers, retailers and users, as well as an academic institution, all having an in-depth expertise in the activities to be carried out in the framework of the project. The partnership is composed of organisations belonging to Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Nordic countries.

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