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Level 3 Testing Materials

Introduction

Visa’s Chip Issuance and Acceptance Product Testing Materials may be used at various stages during the contact and contactless chip product development and deployment cycle. These stages may include:

  • During product development by vendors
  • Prior to vendor submission of the product to Visa or EMVCo for approval
  • Prior to, during or after product deployment into the field

The materials are designed to assist:

  • Visa clients or their service providers, ensure compliance with various technology specifications, Visa rules and best practices that enable global interoperability
  • Technology vendors with product development and quality assurance testing
  • Visa Regional Offices in supporting their clients

Approval by an accredited EMVCo laboratory or by Visa is a prerequisite for deployment of contact and contactless devices accepting Visa-branded products. Contact and Contactless cards must follow Visa’s approval processes. Please see Approval Services for more information.

Note: Use of the Visa test tools does not imply or guarantee that a product or service is fully compliant with Visa or EMV® Specifications.

To review available materials on Product Testing Materials, see Product Testing Materials.

Issuance

Tools offered by Visa and third-party suppliers to chip-issuing clients and their service providers assist in pre-personalization processes and post-personalization validation.

Global Personalization Requirements

The Global Personalization Requirements (GPR) establishes a set of globally consistent validation criteria for use by chip card issuers. Chip tool technology vendors utilize the GPRs to enhance their Personalization Validation Tools (PVTs), which in turn are used by Visa issuers to test that their cards are correctly personalized prior to issuance.

Visa Personalization Assistant (VPA)

The Visa Personalization Assistant (VPA) provides a simplified, streamlined way of personalizing the payment applications on Visa Smart Debit and Credit (VSDC) cards to suit issuer’s business needs, while preserving global interoperability. The output from VPA may be incorporated into the pre-personalization data preparation process or used to establish reference parameters for card validation activities.

Understanding how VPA works may assist Chip tool technology vendors providing personalization validation tools (PVT) to clients.

Level 3 Testing

As of 16 July 2022, the legacy toolkits (ADVT, CDET, U.S. ADVT/CDET, and VpTT) can no longer be used to perform any new L3 testing activities:

From this date, the Visa EMV-compliant Global L3 Test Set Files must be used when performing any new L3 testing globally.


  • The Visa EMV-compliant L3 Test Set Files must be used (these test set files are integrated into third-party vendor test tools available directly from vendors)

  • VMCP can no longer be used for new L3 testing activities (but VMCP is still available for host system testing)

  • mCDET can no longer be used for new L3 testing activities (although it can be used for troubleshooting purposes)


The Chip Compliance Reporting Tool (CCRT) has been enhanced to accept test reports following EMV’s L3 testing framework (i.e., TSEZ). Submission of ADVT, CDET, VpTT and U.S. ADVT / CDET reports will remain available, for a limited time, in CCRT for L3 testing that began before 16 July 2022