EMVCo to Standardize Tokenization

January 22, 2014 –  EMVCo, the technical governing body jointly owned by American Express, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, UnionPay and Visa which establishes standards for chip-based EMV card payments, says it plans to introduce a first draft of new global standards for tokenization specifications later this year.

Tokenization replaces a traditional card account number with a numerical sequence unique to a specific device, merchant, transaction type or channel. EMV is differentiated from other card commerce because account numbers are not stored; instead the token is only valid for the designated transaction.

EMVCo says the new plan will work with existing EMV specifications and support a range of secure payments and technologies for both card-present and card-not-present transactions.

According to Christina Hulka, current chairman of EMVCo board of managers, the tokenization standard presently being crafted is focused on the online and mobile environment. A cohesive tokenization framework has the potential to offer enhanced security and improved consumer confidence while creating an efficient, secure, consistent platform for electronic transactions.

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