Spire Payments, Europe’s third largest and fastest growing payment solutions provider announced that it has become a member of nexo™. nexo recently replaced EPASOrg as the organisation focused on promoting global interoperability and the efficient implementation of state-of-the-art standards for card payments worldwide.

Central to nexo’s purpose is the widespread acceptance of the nexo protocols, a collection of common standards that ensure interoperability between card acceptance devices, payment applications, acquiring systems, integrated retail solutions and terminal management systems.

“The concept of a device and network agnostic future is central to our strategy and will only be possible by the adoption of common standards throughout the payments ecosystem,” commented KazemAminaee, CEO and President of Spire Payments. “Once implemented, this will allow our customers to effortlessly and seamlessly deploy secure and innovative Spire Payments’ solutions across multiple markets. As a member of nexo, we can share our industry knowledge and thanks to our global reach we can also assist in promoting the benefits of SEPA and the nexo protocols outside of the EU.”

EPASOrg was initially created to address the requirements of SEPA (Single European Payments Area) within the EU zone and principally focused on promoting interoperability in all aspects of the electronic card payments ecosystem. EPASOrg, the OSCar Consortium and the CIR Working Group joined forces to create ‘nexo’, an international non-profit association based in Brussels, which will replace the former organisation, EPASOrg.

nexo is gaining global momentum thanks to the high level of payment technology expertise and global footprint of its growing membership base which comprises of companies such as ACI, Auchan Group, Bancomat, Carrefour,  Equens, GIE CartesBancaire, The Pan Nordic Card Association, Wincor-Nixdorf, and many more.

With over 1.3 million payment terminals deployed to date, and a strong base within the EU, Spire Payments has a significant stake in this SEPA payments ecosystem. Its new “SP” open-platform range of payment terminal promotes technological interoperability and flexibility that is characteristic of the SEPA initiative.  Spire Payments product lines were developed around a design framework that is Linux-based and highly flexible in its ability to interoperate seamlessly with any number of point of sale-related devices such as an ECR, a payment gateway, payment application tablets and the like. In 2015 Spire Payments will be implementing the nexo protocols across its full line of products.