CyberSource Payment Tokenization Adds Automated Account Updating

With tokenization, when payment transactions are sent to CyberSource for processing, CyberSource, not the merchant, stores the raw payment data in its secure systems and assigns each transaction a string of characters, a "payment token." Payment tokens enable merchants to use transaction information for tasks such as recurring billing, issuing credits, all without exposing the actual data of the transaction. Finally, tokenization does not involve storing or keeping track of monetary values of cards. The form of the tokens and their functions render them useless to hackers or even to merchant employees who might wish to make illegal use of customer data.

"The point of integrating tokenization with account updating is to simultaneously increase the accuracy of customer billing data and decrease the need for employees to handle that data," said Kirsten Fry-Sanchez, Vice President, Product Management. "Customer card information will be kept current and less likely to fail. Payment information remains tokenized, protecting the integrity of transaction data."

This advance builds on CyberSource's growing suite of payment security solutions designed to eliminate payment data exposure in merchant environments per Enterprise Payment Security 2.0 principles. No other payment service provider has integrated account updating services with payment tokenization/remote secure storage solutions.

The design principles of Enterprise Payment Security 2.0 call for merchants to eliminate payment data exposure at three points of interaction: storage, capture/transmission, and back office administration. CyberSource helps merchants achieve this with a suite of solutions that includes payment tokenization and remote storage of payment data, hosted payment acceptance for data capture, and outsourced services to cover back office functions that require manual processing. Together, these solutions can lower merchants' payment security risk, while also reducing the scope, cost and complexity of payment security compliance. For more information see: http://www.cybersource.com/products_and_services/payment_security/