Keep your card processing secure with tokenization

What is tokenization?

You've probably heard of many credit card breaches, and you don't want to be next! There are many security measures to take, but one security measured used by Worldpay Integrated Payments (formerly Vantiv Integrated Payments) is tokenization.



If someone steals a customer's credit card number, they can use it anywhere to make another purchase in that customer's name. For example, if Fred's card number is 4442-8922-6091-6802, the thief can just enter that number into any website and buy items for themselves with funds they are stealing. So storing credit card numbers is a very high-risk proposition, and you don't want to do it.



On the other hand, card numbers can be tokenized. That means the data you are storing is not the customer's actual card number, but a reference to a link between your customer and your store. So, Fred's card number of 4442-8922-6091-6802 might get replaced by Fred-CornerStore-4f-a2-9c-e9. That token can be charged and refunded to transfer money between Fred and Corner Store, but it cannot be used to charge money to Fred's card at other stores. So a token, even if it were stolen, is worthless to a thief. Now, if you need to give Fred a refund without swiping his card, instead of having to store his credit card number, you can just refund to that token. Worldpay takes care of actually returning the money to Fred's actual account.