Cardholder verification

Cardholder verification is used to evaluate whether the person presenting the card is the legitimate cardholder. There are many cardholder verification methods (CVMs) supported in EMV. They are

• Signature
• Offline plaintext PIN
• Offline enciphered PIN
• Offline plaintext PIN and signature
• Offline enciphered PIN and signature
• Online PIN
• No CVM required
• Fail CVM processing

The terminal uses a CVM list read from the card to determine the type of verification to perform. The CVM list establishes a priority of CVMs to use relative to the capabilities of the terminal. Different terminals support different CVMs. ATMs generally support online PIN. POS terminals vary in their CVM support depending on type and country.