Manufacturers of POS terminals and other vendors are waiting for final test results from EMVCo before selecting technology partners for PIN on Glass products (smartphones and tablets) and software-only payment acceptance applications. Final test results are expected in the first quarter of 2019. Software-only methods of protection for PINs will save merchants the expense of purchasing dedicated hardware capable of handling the encryption required. 

This move away from hardware also marks a new era in payments, one that involves tens of millions of connected devices capable of creating new nodes on a network that can securely accept a payment. Huge opportunities remain to digitize cash and other paper-based payments in consumer and business-to-business payments. 

MagicCube is one of the vendors expected to benefit from EMVCo security validation. The company provides the only software Trusted Execution Environment platform (sTEE). There is no need for a dedicated chip or a chip partition because sTEE moves the secure execution into a software-only container within an app or a payment acceptance device, including those used for IoT (internet of things) applications.

Sam Shawki is CEO at MagicCube Inc. in Santa Clara, California, (650) 863-9723, sam@magiccube.co, www.magiccube.co.

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