Over the years, card processing has become more and more complicated. From the legacy magnetic stripe swipe to the tap-on-phone use case, acceptance systems have suffered from a lack of definition and standardization, leading to a complexity impacting costs, delays, and risks of software projects integrating the card-present payment function.

In order to integrate Agnos properly, it is important to share a common definition of the card processing.

At a first glance, card processing might encapsulate the business logic that is specified inside “L2” specifications. However, payment networks have different view on this level of abstraction. So, it is impossible to rely on such definition. For example, “exception file list management” is an on option part of some contactless “L2” ICS but it is a feature that is typically dependent on acquirer/processor context.

Hence, it would be more accurate to define the card processing as being the business logic that is stable whatever the merchant environment that will integrate it. And the stability of the “L2” is crucial in the context of terminal approval processes managed by payment networks.

This definition leads us to three distinct perspectives of the card processing, a.k.a. the Level 2:

• Its certification

• Its integration

• Its maintenance

Certificability, Integrability, and Maintainability are 3 important concepts related to the card processing.