The industry forum designed to boost uptake of chip cards in the United States sees much potential for its collaborative strategy for payments as a whole—and to reflect that, the EMV Migration Forum is changing its name.

EMV, the chip technology that drives modern debit and credit cards, is on the way to being firmly embraced by the American public.

So, with the migration period well along, where does this leave the EMV Migration Forum? Simple answer: expanding its base of operations.

This week the group announced a plan to rename itself as the U.S. Payments Forum, an industry group that hopes to be fundamental in the introduction and standardization of new electronic payment technologies, both big and small.

Randy Vanderhoof, the director of the forum, emphasized that the strategy the group used to introduce EMV to the U.S. was translatable with numerous other technologies.

“There are also many other payment technologies that require the same breadth of stakeholder engagement, cooperation, and coordination for successful implementation in the U.S.,” Vanderhoof said in a statement. “The transition of this organization to the U.S. Payments Forum provides an opportunity to capitalize on the strong, existing organization that the networks, issuers, merchants, processors, and industry suppliers already know and trust, allowing the entire industry to come together to ensure successful implementation of these new technologies.”

The forum will continue to support chip migration while offering a backing on technical issues, best practices, and educational needs for both the industry and public. But new to the mix will be efforts to help standardize technologies like tokenization, mobile payments, and point-to-point encryption.

Vanderhoof emphasized that there was still much to do with chips, despite the name change implying otherwise.

“The migration to chip payments is the biggest and most complex implementation by the U.S. payments ecosystem and will remain a top priority for the U.S. Payments Forum,” he added.

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