EPAS ( Electronic Protocols Application Software ) was a European non-commercial cooperation initiative which developing a series of data protocols to be applied in a point of sale (POS) environment. This included the protocols used by payment terminals and card payment systems. The project focused on three protocols; a terminal management protocol, a retailer application protocol and an acquirer protocol.
5-657: In 2024, EPAS was merged with two other organizations to create Nexo Specifications . The organization was launched in 2005, and took over some of the work done on payment terminal standards in Germany by the Open Payment Initiative . The initiative was structured along three following main phases: In 2012, it was merged with the OSCar consortium and the CIR SEPA-Fast technical working group to create
10-611: A de facto European standard, which spread from Germany to retailing projects throughout Europe. The specifications, which were first published in 2003, and reference installations are based on the POS EPS specifications from IFSF (International Forecourt Standards Forum), which were developed for the service station industry and to which retail features have been added. The universal O.P.I. interface has made it possible to integrate varying EFT/PoS solutions in European POS projects for
15-578: A global standards organization called Nexo Standards . The EPAS Consortium is composed of 24 organisations. Open Payment Initiative The Open Payment Initiative , or O.P.I. for short, was launched to standardize the application interface between the electronic point of sale (EPOS) application and any cashless payments solution installed on the electronic funds transfer at point of sale (EFTPOS) payment terminal . The specification for this interface focused mainly on international and cross-industry aspects. By 2005 The O.P.I. interface had become
20-460: The PoS peripherals, e.g. to a PoS printer to print out receipts, a display to output messages to the cashier or cardholder, or a magnetic card reader. Decoupling the interface in this way increases its flexibility for integration in international, solution and industry-specific scenarios for users as well as for PoS and payment solution providers, and therefore also protects their investments. Since 2003,
25-408: The first time. The O.P.I. interface implementation does not depend on a specific operating system. It is an XML -based interface. Communication takes place via TCP/IP. The XML messages are exchanged over two sockets that are referred to as channels (channel 0 and channel 1). The original OPI/IFSF specification defines three message pairs: Using the O.P.I. interface gives a payment solution access to
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