Payment Tokenization

Securing your customer’s data is something that needs to be carefully considered when you run your own business. You need to know what options are available to you and what safeguards are in place through the companies you partner with to build or operate your online store. eMerchant understands this and offers a solution through our eMerchant Gateway to protect your customer’s sensitive information using a process known as tokenization.

Tokenization is the process of breaking a stream of text/numbers up into words, phrases, symbols, or other meaningful elements called tokens. This token can then be used in place of a credit card number when processing a transaction. This is useful when a merchant does not want to undertake the security requirements of storing card data. The tokens can be stored by the merchant without needing to meet PCI requirements for PAN (primary account number) storage.

In layman’s terms, when an order is placed on your online store, your customer’s sensitive billing information (credit card #, expiration date, CVC/CVN #) is transmitted to your payment gateway and a randomized string of alpha-numeric characters (the token) is returned with the authorization request. This token takes the place of the billing information you collected and is stored in your shopping cart/order management software database. This token is unique to the specific transaction that occurred. You would pass this token back to the gateway for any subsequent billing and/or credit transaction that was needed for the specific transaction.

Of course, there are technical requirements that need to be adhered to between the payment gateway and the shopping cart/order management software. There are also numerous actions that occur between the payment gateway and the payment card network.

Contact us today and an account executive can get you started with a secure payment process solution for your online business.