PayFair - The European Card Payment Solution!

Delivering on the promises of SEPA and in line with the European Commission’s objectives, PayFair is looking to offer a truly European Payment Scheme for cards that caters for low cost solution, pricing transparency and independent governance.

One of the key principles of the PayFair scheme is that all players get a fair compensation for the services rendered to the other players in the transaction processing value chain.  Hence no hidden fees, commissions, provisions... bundled or not with processing fees in 'Interchange Fees' and 'Merchant Service Charges' but a transparent list of service fees that relate to real transaction processing activities.  PayFair is also providing a real service differentiation to merchants by enabling them to choose which level of payment service they really need.

As a result the PayFair business model is promoting the following features:

• Flat fees for intra-parties POS fees, % fees being only used for low value payments in order to promote cash displacement
• Low cost product structure
• Common business model and fee levels across SEPA
• Guaranteed payments
• Possibility of non-guaranteed payments with direct-debit collection by the merchant (if so desired by the merchant, based on the IBAN and switch code present in the EMW Chip)

PayFair transaction processing does rely on proven but cost effective hardware and software solutions that are optimized for the target players in the scheme. PayFair scheme operation will be based on the best of breed of existing card schemes standards (EMV, ISO 8583, ISO 20022, …).

The PayFair scheme and processing services are leveraging industrial standards in order to avoid unnecessary costs to its customers and to provide best security:

• The PayFair scheme is SCF (SEPA Card Framework) compliant
• EMV terminals (for chip implementations)
• PIN is validated off-line by the terminal but all transactions go technically on-line for authorization
• Cards are supporting multiple EMV applications, starting with:
  • PayFair debit, deferred debit or credit
  • Card authentication application (for remote cardholder authentication)
  • Contactless payments based on NFC, using card or mobile implementations
  • …
• Merchant loyalty identification is supported
• Authorization and Clearing is based on national standards as well as on ISO 8583 following the Berlin Group’s specification and ISO 20022.
• PCI-DSS compliant

The issuing of the PayFair scheme is open to all parties in the market, being merchants or banks.

It is based on a classical 4 party model as illustrated on the below diagram: