Facilitating safer payments experiences with Token ID
Visa has issued 1 billion tokens worldwide, used by 13,000+ merchants
Today, Visa announced that it has issued its 1 billionth token and offered insight into the expansion of its tokenization portfolio to protect more types of digital transactions.
As part of this, and following the acquisition of Rambus Payments’ token services business, we are announcing the rebrand of this business unit to Token ID – A Visa Solution. Token ID will be fundamental to Visa’s “next billion tokens” as our technology expands Visa’s tokenization capabilities beyond card-based payments on the Visa network to those on domestic card, ACH and real-time payment networks.
This rebrand reconfirms our commitment to our customers and, as Token ID, we will continue to independently support customers to protect and enrich digital payment experiences.
Tokenization meaning
Tokenization replaces sensitive payment information with a unique identifier, or “token”, to make digital payments safer. Our Token ID division empowers banks, merchants, regional schemes, clearing houses and other payments stakeholders to transform payments by building, managing and controlling their own tokenization capabilities.
The importance of tokenization
As the world has shifted to digital payments and channels, fraud reduction, authorization and innovation of new, safer digital payment experiences has become more important than ever before. Tokenization is one of the most effective ways of reducing fraud and securing card payments at the point-of-sale, online and for stored card credentials. And, with Token ID, stakeholders can utilize tokenization capabilities beyond cards to bring greater trust to account-based and real-time payments.
Visa’s tokenization journey
Following the launch of Visa Token Service (VTS) in 2014, Visa has made significant progress building and scaling tokenization for card-based payments, including mobile and wearable manufacturers, issuer wallets, online merchants, payment service providers and acquirers. Today, there are over 13,000 merchants transacting with Visa COF tokens1. There are also over 8,200 issuers enabled on Visa Token Service from 150 markets, and Visa recently anounced that it has passed the 1 billion mark for issued tokens throughout VTS. Token ID now sits alongside VTS as a Visa token solution, offering flexibility to payments stakeholders.
The choice is yours
Token ID has the potential to underpin all forms of digital payment experiences. Our customers can benefit from Visa’s scale, in terms of investment in innovation and support, and also from the opportunities that come with access to the Visa ecosystem and value-added services. Fundamentally, this is about choice for the payments ecosystem: choice where and how to utilize tokenization to protect and enrich transactions for the benefit of everyone.
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[1] VisaNet merchant data based on tokenized transactions processed between Jan. 2019 and June 2020