The Next Level in Preventing Credit Card Fraud
In recent years, news headlines involving security breaches of big companies like Target and Uber have placed the methods by which the payments industry protects consumer data under public scrutiny. Merchants and processors have the responsibility to keep cardholder information safe, although it is increasingly hard to do so in today’s world. Enter card tokenization: the next step in protecting customer data and keeping merchant reputations safe. Customers who use mobile wallets already get the extra protection of this technology—making mobile wallets the most secure form of electronic payment.
What is a Token and How Does it Work?
A token is a series of randomly generated numbers (or numbers and alphabetic characters, depending on the type of tokenization program). This string of random characters replaces a customer’s actual card data. Then, the customer’s data can be stored and used just as if it were the actual card, however, the token has no value outside of the payment acceptance system and makes no sense to a potential card thief. This means that if there is ever a breach in security, the tokens are unusable to cybercriminals.
Payarc and Card Tokenization
Payarc’s risk management program provides merchants with the option to tokenize their customers’ data, among other security measures. Once the card data is entered into the payment system through any method of payment, that data is tokenized. This works for both card-present and card-not-present transactions. This means that we can give both merchants and customers much-needed peace of mind, and we can help merchants stay PCI-compliant.