Visa Europe said Tuesday (Feb. 16) that it has expanded its tokenization service to enable customers in the financial services industry to bring tokenization to transactions where payments information is stored in the cloud, including mobile apps.
The company also said that the tokenization push extends to hardware, such as wearable devices, and to eWallets and Visa Checkout. As Visa Europe noted in a release detailing the expansion, tokenization gathers greater reach in tandem with the fact that card-on-file payments are becoming increasingly common across retailers and merchants through a variety of industries. Users also have the ability to link their cards to digital payment services and can keep their details secure across mediums such as paying in person or online. The initiative also allows merchants to increase their digital offerings.
In a statement provided by Sandra Alzetta, executive director of product enablement for Visa Europe: “People throughout Europe are encountering innovative new technologies that offer fast and frictionless ways to pay wherever, whenever and on whatever device they choose. By 2020, our projections are for one in five consumers to pay for items using their smartphone on a daily basis and for payments on mobile or tablet to account for more than 50 percent of Visa transactions. Looking at contactless as an early indicator, where adoption has doubled and spend has trebled in the last year, we believe this projection could well be a conservative estimate.”
Through tokenization technology, sensitive information is stored on a device by effectively making it worthless, as the underlying details are not exposed, with tokens provided through the transaction rather than those details. A series of numbers stand in for the actual account information, and, as has been noted by Visa and elsewhere, several tokens can be stored on a single card.
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
Learn More