Castles Technology’s MP200 Mobile Payment Terminal Is EMV-Certified

Castles Technology Co., a manufacturer of global payment technology solutions, announced Monday (April 10) that the MP200 mobile payment terminal has been EMV-certified by eProcessing Network on TSYS.

In a press release, Castles Technology said merchants will now be able to accept EMV contact and contactless cards, including mobile payment solutions like Apple Pay and Android Pay. According to Castles Technology, the MP200 is a mobile payment terminal that can accept EMV contact, EMV contactless and magstripe. Utilizing eProcessing Network’s gateway API, ISVs and other developers will be able to integrate EMV payments into their business applications. In addition to chip, magstripe and contactless capabilities, the MP200 includes USB, Bluetooth and WiFi communication options. Added features like 3G and a signature capture touch screen will be available soon, the company said in the release.

The move on the part of Castles Technology comes at a time when the credit card issuers are increasingly moving to EMV cards. Take Visa, for one example. In June Visa said there are 300 million chip cards in circulation and 1.2 million EMV merchant locations. Visa was also the first to say that there could and should be more places for consumers to use their chip cards. Terminal certification has, so far, been a big barrier to making that possible, and the hue and cry across the ecosystem over the EMV certification backlog has now reached a fever pitch. Merchants who thought that they were doing the right thing by upgrading their terminals by the October liability shift realized that just having an EMV terminal on a counter was only the very first step. Certifying that terminal to ensure that it could support an EMV transaction turned out to be a lot more time-consuming than they — or anyone — anticipated and/or was prepared to handle expediently. The more complex the merchant environment, the longer that process could take.