EMVCo drafts one credential standard so merchants stop building per-wallet integrations

EMVCo, the body that maintains the global EMV chip-card specifications, put out a draft framework on July 6, 2026 proposing a single standard for verifiable digital credentials in card-based payments. The problem it targets is integration sprawl: merchants currently build separate integrations for each wallet and payment network they support, each with its own credential format and validation logic. EMVCo's proposal would let a merchant implement one consistent data structure for digital credential authentication and have it work the same way regardless of which wallet or network a given customer's card runs on. The framework is still in draft, and no adoption timeline has been set.

Why it matters

Every fragmented credential format a merchant has to individually support is also a fragmented attack surface, more integration code means more places for authentication logic to have a gap. A single verified data structure across wallets and networks is the same standardization logic that made WebAuthn valuable for login: one correctly implemented validation path beats a dozen wallet-specific ones that each have to get it right independently.

This is worth tracking alongside Google and Mastercard's separate AP2 agentic payments work, both are EMVCo-adjacent efforts to standardize how payment authorization gets verified as the number of parties in a transaction, wallets, agents, issuers, keeps growing.

Source: FIDO Alliance