What is Agnos?

Agnos is a universal card processing stack (a.k.a the “L2”) available on any payment platforms, and pre-certified for most of the international and debit brands. It aims to shorten integration times, and to lower the risks in regards with the different certification processes it has to comply with.

Agnos is also a framework intended to serve as a support or a guide for the building of something that expands its structure into something useful: a payment application (a.k.a the “L3”). In computer systems, “a framework is often a layered structure indicating what kind of programs can or should be built and how they would interrelate”.

Finally, Agnos framework is packaged along with an API that is the level of abstraction that shall be integrated from the payment application that needs to use the stack. Agnos API (alias Open L2 API or OLA) is a set of normalized programming services allowing to interact with the framework.

The Framework

Agnos stands for Agnostic. It has been developed independently from any platforms or Operating Systems. Hence, it is available on secure devices, mobile platforms such as Android, SCRPs, PC based systems, and more… Its main characteristics are:

• Fast card processing time (no dynamic allocation, rapid accesses to tags)

• Small footprint (mutualized RAM usage)

• Easy to integrate (well defined “L2” encapsulation, no business logic to overload)

• Highly configurable (full stack with parameters to enable/disable “L2” features)

Agnos stack has been developed following global specifications. It means that its implementation is independent from any regional and merchant considerations. Any merchant’s, acquirer’s or processor’s (i.e. “L3”) requirements shall be implemented on top of that software layer to guaranty its integrity (in regards with certification rules) and its stability across the time.

The Guide

The Integration Guide is meant to accompany developers familiar - or not - with the payment function, and specifically with the card processing. It shall be used as a reference to develop merchant applications contemplating the integration of a card-present payment function. A good understanding of Agnos is required to design the appropriate architecture that will support merchants’ requirements.