Now is the time to secure happy shoppers for a busy fall shopping season

Consumers rely more and more on devices to make purchases as commerce is increasingly shifting online. The need to offer an easy and safer online way to pay is more important than ever. Savvy merchants are realizing that tokenization, which replaces private account data with a unique token, can safeguard consumer data and their own data. 

First introduced in 2014, tokenization has seen a huge uptick in adoption by merchants and acquirers in the last year, with more than a 100% year-over-year increase in tokenized transactions alone. With holiday season prep underway, now is the time to ensure that shoppers have a seamless and more secure shopping experience to keep them coming back for more.

Visa Token Service is a solution from Visa that makes online and mobile payment transactions safer and results in higher approval rates by providing more information during the transaction. Here are some of the ways that Visa tokens can help drive more transactions for retailers, payment service providers (PSPs) and financial institutions:

1. Lower fraud rates: Visa Token Service can reduce fraud by as much as 67%, which helps reduce costs to retailers and inconvenience to their customers.
   
   
2. Higher authorization rates: Visa Token Service can increase authorization rates by as much as 3%. Higher e-commerce authorization approval rates remove consumer friction related to decline, which can result in more transactions and increased customer engagement for merchants.
   
   
3. Less friction: Visa Token Service helps issuers seamlessly update customer card details if a new card has been issued due to expiration, loss or theft. With tokens, customers who have an expired card on file with a retailer can avoid late payments and potential fees from missed billing cycles, eliminating a significant point of friction for both consumers and merchants. 

Visa offers standards, specifications, development tools and turnkey mobile solutions to help partners build and deploy their own tokenized solutions to cardholders via the Visa Token Service SDK. Secure Remote Commerce, part of the Visa Digital Commerce Program, also supports tokenization for card not present transactions, enabling merchants to offer their customers a more secure and standardized way to checkout online without having to invest in integrations across many different digital payment methods.

To access the power of Visa Token Service, Visa clients, including payment service providers (PSP), can contact their Visa representative. Merchants should contact their PSP to ensure that tokenization is behind every trusted Visa transaction. Learn more about tokenization and how to get a secure solution started by visiting the Visa Ready portal.