Tokenization

As payment technology evolves, consumers are increasingly making their purchases online, or through mobile devices and “digital wallet” applications, where their payment card information may be saved online, or onto their device for more efficiency in future check-out experiences.

Although these types of purchases can provide convenience and efficiency to the cardholder, they also happen to be more vulnerable against counterfeiting, unauthorized account use and other forms of fraud compared to the traditional Card-Present (EMV) transactions.

With fraudsters inventing new ways to take advantage of these vulnerabilities, it is more important than ever for financial institutions, merchants, and payment brands to ensure consumer security. One way to tackle this problem is through the use of payment token numbers.

Tokenization is a method for protecting card data by substituting a card’s Primary Account Number (PAN) with a unique, randomly generated alternative number, known as a “token.” This token then acts as a substitute of the card’s actual PAN when conducting payments or while the data is at-rest inside issuer or retailer systems. The token can be reversed to its true associated PAN value by the service provider that initially created the token.

AEON offers end-to-end, hands-on support for implementing tokenization services with VISA and MasterCard.