Rambus has been chosen as a partner to participate in Visa’s token service provider program (TSP). According to Visa, broader access to new standards such as tokenization are set to be in growing demand as the payments industry shifts from plastic to digital.
As Jim McCarthy, Visa’s executive vice president of innovation and strategic partnerships, explains, the company has built a global network of partners to offer secure, digital payment token services across multiple form factors, including Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, appliances and wearables.
“A potential tidal wave of new payment accounts is approaching — conservative estimates expect 21 billion Internet-connected devices in just three more years,* so having both the partner network and the right technology in place are fundamental to driving payments on those devices,” he stated.
Visa’s token service provider program – first announced in October 2016 – offers companies a standards-based approach and access to Visa’s broad network of tools and services, including the Visa Token Service, as well as integration, development and marketing support. The program also helps expand the market for tokenization to other companies as they develop new and secure digital payment services and promotes consistency envisioned in the EMVCo token standards.
As we’ve previously discussed on Rambus Press, tokenization is a payment security technology that replaces cardholder information, such as account numbers and expiration dates, with a unique digital identifier (a “token”) that can be used for payment without exposing a cardholder’s more sensitive account information. Essentially, this means tokenized data is worthless if obtained by fraudsters, as it simply acts as a reference for a consumer’s original card data – which only the card networks and/or the consumer’s bank can map back to the original account.
Interested in learning more about tokenization? You can find out more about Rambus’ mobile payments product portfolio, which includes a number of tokenization solutions, and download our eBook on the subject below.
** Gartner, IoT report, February 2017, http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3598917
