“…when the card is used for an online transaction, the card number itself doesn’t need to be transmitted, meaning that fraudsters can’t intercept it.”
Online shopping is poised to get a little bit safer, with Visa announcing that 28 new partners are going to join its Visa Token Service.
As its name suggests, the Visa Token Service revolves around tokenization – specifically, the tokenization of payment card details. Essentially, it replaces a cardholder’s 16-digit Visa card number with a randomized “token” to which only Visa has the key; that way, when the card is used for an online transaction, the card number itself doesn’t need to be transmitted, meaning that fraudsters can’t intercept it. Instead, the Visa Token Service simply confirms for the online merchant that it is a genuine and legitimate Visa account being used.
This is a good practice in terms of security, but it also improves end user convenience, since consumers don’t need to manually update stored Visa card information when they replace their cards.
The prospective new “Credential-On-File” token requestors for the Visa Token Service include a few notable names, such as Moneris and Yandex.Money. Once approved as COF token requestors, they’ll be able to tokenize payment credentials on behalf of their merchant and payment clients.
“We’ve seen a fraud reduction rate of 26% for digital transactions processed through Visa Token Service compared to traditional online card transactions,” attested Visa Digital Payments Products SVP Ansar Ansari in a statement announcing the new partners. “That’s impressive, and these new partners will only add to the momentum.”
Visa says that it has added over 150 token requestors to its Visa Token Service since its launch in 2014, and that Visa Token Services are thought to have processed a combined value of $1 trillion in digital payments.
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