Latest Posts
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Cardholder Verification Explained: PIN, Signature, and More
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When I first started working on EMV transactions, one of the things that confused me the most was cardholder verification. I was so focused on getting the terminal to talk properly to the card, sending the right APDUs, and parsing the responses that I didn’t pay much attention to what comes next, how the system…
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Reading EMV Records: How Terminals Get What They Need
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I want to share something with you today that brought me a lot of headaches when I was working on my first contactless EMV implementation. If you’re diving into EMV transactions, especially building or testing somethink like a SoftPOS or EMV kernel, you’ll eventually bump into a critical question: “How does the terminal know what…
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What Happens When You Tap or Insert? A Look at GPO and AFL
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When I first started working with EMV transactions, I used to wonder: what really happens the moment you tap or insert your card? On the surface it looks so simple, the card is near the terminal, something blinks, and then the screen shows “Processing”. But inside, a lot of things are happening between the card…
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How Terminals Select the Right Application on an EMV Card
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When I was building an EMV payment terminal for one of our retail clients a few years ago, one of the things I had to understand deeply was how the terminal figure out what application to use when a card is tapped or inserted. Sounds simple, right? Just pick one and go? Not quite. If…
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Best Tools to Analyze EMV Cards Like a Pro
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When I started working on EMV projects, I thought reading data from a chip card was just about plugging it into a reader and magically the data will appear on my screen. I was wrong. The reality is that EMV cards are a little world of their own, with data stored in very specific formats,…
About Me
Hi I’m Assi—I’m dedicated to advancing cashless payment technology and sharing insights with fellow developers and solution architects on my blog, Cashless Nomad.
I embrace a mobile lifestyle by replacing cash with digital payments, enabling seamless transactions anywhere. Going cashless keeps me connected, agile, and financially flexible—perfect for traveling light and skipping currency hassles.
Checkout my other blogs at marai.dev