Visa unveils new partners on ‘tokenization’
Visa Inc on Wednesday announced the commercial expansion of the Visa Token Service for credentialon-file (COF) token requestors, marking a major milestone towards further securing consumer payments in the digital channel.
With this expansion, acquirer gateway and technology partners Adyen, AsiaPay, Braintree, Checkout.com, Cherri Tech, CyberSource, Elavon, Ezidebit, eWAY, Fit-Pay, Giesecke & Devrient, PayPal, Payscout, Ram bus, Safe Charge, Secure Co, Square, Stripe, Worldpay and YellowPepper are or will soon be able to tokenize credential-on-file digital payments on behalf of their merchant and payment clients.
Built on top of the EMVCo Payment Tokenization Standard, the Visa Token Service offers another layer of security by replacing sensitive cardholder information, such as personal account numbers and expiration dates, with a unique digital identifier (a “token”) that can be used for payment without exposing a cardholder’s more sensitive account information. In addition to enhancing security, expired or compromised payment credentials can be seamlessly updated in the background by the financial institution, eliminating a significant point of friction for consumers and merchants.
Merchants also get the added security protection of being shielded from data breaches that occur elsewhere in the ecosystem since the Visa card number is replaced with a token unique to the merchant or gateway acquirer partner.
“Today, we welcome 20 partners into the Visa Token Service who will help scale tokenization to their thousands of merchant clients and millions of customers around the world. This opens up a world of possibilities for our merchants and partners to further evolve and innovate in digital payments,” said Ansar Ansari, senior vice president, digital payment products, Visa. “Making digital transactions even more secure is one of Visa’s biggest priorities. Working with Visa, these partners will help secure cardholder data and make digital payments safer, resulting in frictionless digital commerce experiences for consumers.”
“Adyen is excited to be the first acquirer in the payments ecosystem with in-market solutions to support and offer Visa Token Service to our global merchants,” said Kamran Zaki, president, North America, Adyen. “In addition to improving security, Visa network tokens through Adyen will allow our merchants with cards on file to reduce involuntary churn and improve authorization rates without any additional work on their part.” (AP)