Visa Europe has announced its plan to launch a payment tokenisation service customized for the needs of the European market.
Tokenisation technology will be at the heart of new mobile payment solutions and has
Visa Europe launches payment tokenisation and expands P2P payments capabilities
been hailed as one of the best data protection and fraud prevention methods available. The new service will be available for financial institutions from mid-April 2015.
Visa Europe has developed the payment tokenisation service to meet an increasing demand from consumers to use their latest smartphones and wearable devices for payments.
The payment tokenisation service protects customer data, substituting the payment account information found on a plastic card with a series of numbers that can be used to authorise payment without exposing actual account details. When consumers use their mobile device to make a contactless payment in a store, a token is submitted, rather than their account details.
The service supports the continuing fight against fraud, allowing financial institutions to control the environments where the token can be used – for example, a token set up only for contactless payments cannot be used to make an on-line purchase. Additionally, if a mobile device is lost or stolen, a token can be easily and promptly disabled.
“We believe that 2015 will be the year that mobile payments will be in the hands of consumers across Europe,” says Sandra Alzetta, Executive Director, Core Products for Visa Europe.
“Tokenisation is one of the most important technologies to emerge in digital payments and has the potential to start a whole new chapter in the kinds of products that are developed. For that reason, we’ve designed this flexible and scalable service, enabling issuers, merchants and acquirers to provide consumers with the next generation of innovative payment methods – all with the high level of security they expect.”
In a similar development, Visa Europe announced that Visa Direct, formerly Visa Personal Payments, is expanding its offering into most countries where Visa has a presence*, creating a global P2P payments service. With Visa Direct, Visa Europe Member banks can offer their card holders the ability to transfer money quickly, securely and easily to nearly 2 billion Visa card holders across the world using just a mobile number or a Visa card number.
Available this summer, the expanded Visa Direct service from Visa Europe will be available in 20 languages and will now also support multiple currencies to make it faster and easier than ever for people to send money to friends and family using just their mobile phone number.
“Together with Visa Europe, we are driving the next generation of social P2P payments. Working with Visa Europe and its member banks, we will be able to bring social money transfers to over 500 million people across Europe,” continues Vince Tallent, Chairman and CEO of fastacash.
“We see this partnership with Visa Europe as the next step in bringing banks and end-users closer in the often complicated process of money transfers.”
*Except the US, Japan and OFAC-sanctioned countries
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