Visa Europe is opening up its tokenisation service, letting banks, retailers and tech firms use the technology for a host of new payment options.
Tokenisation replaces the traditional 16-digit Visa account number with a unique series of numbers, helping to prevent exposure of sensitive consumer account information in online and mobile payments.
Trumpeted by Visa as a key new tool in the fight against fraud, it arrived in Europe a year ago, having already been introduced in the States for the launch of Apple Pay.
The expansion of the Visa Europe Payment Tokenisation Service will let firms integrate the technology into services where payment credentials are stored in the cloud, such as banks’ own mobile payment apps, and wearable and other ‘connected’ devices. Tokenisation will also come to browser-based wallets and retailer-specific checkout offerings such as Visa Checkout; and the card on file payment options used by online retailers.
By widening Visa Europe’s support for mobile payment relying on the storage of credentials on devices, the firm says it will enable more players to develop new ways to pay.
Sandra Alzetta, executive director, product enablement, Visa Europe, says: "By 2020, our projections are for one in five consumers to pay for items using their smartphone on a daily basis and for payments on mobile or tablet to account for more than 50% of Visa transactions.
"By expanding our service to make tokenisation available to our client banks through a number of new technology partners, consumers will have access to all manner of fantastic new payment experiences accessible through their mobile phones, tablets and all manner of other ‘connected’ devices."