Visa brings token management service to clients globally

Visa has introduced Token Management Service, a solution designed to unify management and secure customer payment data to its clients globally. Token Management Service enables an integrated view of payment preferences and behaviors across a merchant’s commerce platforms, processing environments, geographies, payment types and card brands.

Seventy percent of the world, or more than 5 billion people, will be connected via mobile device by 2020, creating the need for merchants to provide consumers with seamless digital payments that work securely, anywhere and on any device. Laying a foundation for this transition, Visa has developed Token Management Service, part of Visa’s CyberSource payment management platform.

“Our clients are seeking to create new integrated commerce experiences that unify their digital and physical operations to gain a comprehensive 360-degree view of their customer interactions,” said Andre Machicao, senior vice president, digital merchant products, Visa.

“Today’s launch of Token Management Service brings merchants a vital capability to better service their customers by enabling them to embrace and create new, frictionless and secure payment experiences and maintain their competitive edge.”

Different token services deployed across multiple digital commerce environments create channel silos, preventing merchants from fully understanding payment behavior across their various customer touchpoints. Token Management Service helps enable merchants to unify payment token implementation in order to provide simple, innovative and seamless purchasing experiences.

For example:

• Customers can buy goods online, then pick them up in store, or make a purchase online and return items in-store.
• Merchants can augment their customer engagement strategy with tailored loyalty programs and promotions to suit customer preferences and behavior, ultimately providing impactful customer experiences

Merchants can deploy Token Management Service with limited changes to their current IT infrastructure. When using the service, payment information is stored in secure Visa data centers. Merchants can benefit directly by reducing costs associated with compliance and minimizing security threats associated with keeping sensitive data on their own networks.

“Merchants operate in an omnichannel world where customers have the power of choice in shopping, namely – how, where, and when to buy. Consumers also value convenience and immediacy in their interaction with merchants and expect a streamlined payment experience regardless of their buying method or platform,” said Raymond Pucci, associate director, Mercator Advisory Group. “Providing a unified token management service as part of a layered approach to payment risk mitigation ensures a fast and secure checkout experience that strengthens the customer relationship.”

The latest addition to Visa’s innovative digital solutions for merchants, Token Management Service is a complementary solution to Visa Token Service, a payment network tokenization service developed by Visa in 2014.

Visa Token Service has paved the way for innovative digital payments types, ranging from technologies such as Visa Checkout, to mobile wallets and payment-enabled IoT devices, including wearables, connected cars and appliances and mobile commerce in retail environments.

Token Management Service will enable merchants to realize the value of payment-network tokens by simplifying integration into Visa Token Service and other payment network tokenization services.