Visa has announced that it has issued its billionth token as part of an ongoing effort to make payments more secure. Visa Token Service (VTS) replaces a cardholder's 16-digit Visa account number with a secure token, designed to protect the underlying card number from fraudsters. With the huge rise in digital payments, which has been exacerbated by the recent coronavirus crisis, the demand for more secure and contactless payment systems has never been higher. This led to the rapid adoption of Visa token technology. Citing data from Retail Systems Research's consumer report in March, the company found that 90% of shoppers are now reluctant to shop in physical stores and 45% say online shopping is now a daily necessity.
Growth in digital payments
Meanwhile, data from Statista's "Number of Digital Shoppers Worldwide" report reveals that digital customers are expected to reach 2.100 billion people globally by 2021. Thus, Visa claims that its Tokenization, as well as your click-to-pay experience, will play an increasingly vital role in improving the security of digital payments around the world. Often displayed as a button, click to pay eliminates the need to create passwords and manually enter card details during website transactions. VisaNet merchant data revealed that as more merchants and retailers adopt VTS technology, it is also accelerating its efforts on file identification (COF), where cardholders allow merchants to store their payment details for pending transactions. . Visa reports that to date, more than 13,000 merchants have transacted with its COF tokens. There are also more than 8,200 issuers activated on the Visa token service from 150 markets. "The massive transition of the digital world highlights the need for easy and secure digital commerce, which is why we have seen an increase in the number of tokens issued by the Visa Token Service," said Ansar Ansari, Executive Vice President Digital Payment Products . Visa. "In the last 12 months alone, Visa has issued more than 680 million tokens, and we are delighted to further expand our capabilities to be able to secure even more types of digital transactions, including those without 16-digit Visa credentials."