Visa Token Service Issues Its 1 Billionth Token

Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) today announced that the company has now issued more than 1 billion tokens worldwide through Visa Token Service (VTS), marking a major milestone in its proprietary offering to help accelerate eCommerce innovation and make payments more secure. Visa Token Service replaces a cardholder’s 16-digit Visa account number with a secure token that protects the underlying card number from fraudsters.

The rapid adoption of Visa’s tokenization technology comes as the world’s massive shift to digital has changed the way we live, work and buy, with 90% of shoppers hesitant to shop in stores and 45% claiming online shopping is now a necessity1. With digital buyers expected to hit 2.1 billion worldwide by 20212, Visa’s tokenization technology as well as its click to pay experience play a vital role in strengthening digital payment security globally, which is more critical now than ever before.

With more merchants and retailers adopting tokenization technology, VTS is scaling and accelerating its credential-on-file (COF) tokenization efforts. Today, there are over 13,000merchants transacting with Visa COF tokens3. There are also over 8,200 issuers enabled on Visa Token Service from 150 markets.

“The world’s massive shift to digital underscores the need for easy and secure digital commerce, which is why we’ve seen such an increase in the number of tokens issued by Visa Token Service,” said Ansar Ansari, senior vice president, digital payment products, Visa. “In the last 12 months alone, Visa has issued more than 680 Million tokens, and we’re excited to be expanding our capabilities even further so we can secure even more types of digital transactions – even those without a 16-digit Visa credential.”

The Next Billion Tokens – Visa Takes Tokenization From the Card to Cloud

Looking ahead, Visa is launching new and evolved solutions to minimize operational risks around data protection for merchants and mobile carriers, reducing unnecessary steps and friction for consumers. These advancements enable Visa to implement the latest industry-leading security measures that can be applied at both the network and financial institution level.

• Token ID Expands Tokenization Capabilities Beyond the Card: Visa is unveiling the rebrand of its recently acquired Rambus Payments token services business, to Token ID – A Visa Solution. Token ID expands Visa’s tokenization capabilities beyond card-based payments on the Visa network to those on domestic card networks, account-based and real-time payments. When working in collaboration with Visa Token Service, Token ID will help clients scale fraud-reduction, secure payment solutions achieved by tokenization technology, while helping Visa expand its tokenization services to new markets with specific localization requirements such as Turkey and China.
• Token Management Service by CyberSource: Token Management Service by CyberSource centralizes and simplifies token management to secure customer payment data, improve payment conversions and eases PCI compliance implications. It links tokens across service providers, all payment types and channels for merchants, acquirers and technology platforms. It creates one unified token identifier – a token-of-tokens – to centralize and orchestrate management of all payment instruments, including cards, bank accounts and local payment schemes. The unified token identifier generated by CyberSource protects sensitive customer payment data and provides a 360-degree view of the customer across payment channels, merchant rewards, and loyalty programs.
• Cloud Tokens: As consumers expand their use of devices for online shopping, Visa has enabled a new, cloud-based system that allows more flexibility than binding tokens to a single device. The Visa Cloud Token Framework enables eCommerce and card-on-file tokens provisioned to the consumers’ account to be bound to multiple trusted devices. Cloud Tokens are available globally but launched first in LAC. Specifically, Brazilian consumers are the first in the world to use the new Visa Cloud Token technology to help enable secure payments on WhatsApp.

The 1 billion tokens milestone is another key moment in this drive to innovate, and comes on the heels of Visa naming 28 new partners to VTS as COF token requestors, set to make digital transactions more secure by tokenizing both one-time and recurring payments made with Visa credentials.

For more information about Visa Token Service, visit here.

1 Retail Systems Research Consumer Report: March 2020
2 Statista, Number of digital buyers worldwide from 2014 to 2021
3 VisaNet merchant data based on tokenized transactions processed between Jan. 2019 and June 2020

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