17 Aug MOBILE WALLETS AND TOKENIZATION

Posted at 16:36h in Merchant Tips by

Due to the nature of our business we are constantly being inundated with questions pertaining to every aspect of credit cards. A couple of the typical questions are:

  • What does the chip really do?

  • Are the mobile wallets actually secure?

  • How does identity theft really happen?

Ironically these top three questions have a very common theme and we can encompass all three with one question. “How secure is the consumer credit card in all of its forms”?

Believe it or not mobile wallets are one of the most secure options you can have for payment. They cannot be stolen via the dreaded RFID reader that the consumer has been warned of to sell wallets. There is no card number or magstripe to be stolen as well as no physical card. You may ask “what if my phone gets stolen”? Not only should you have a code to get into your phone but you should also take advantage of the biometrics necessary to make a payment using most mobile wallets. Mobile wallets use NFC (near field communication) Technology and tokenization. The purpose NFC payments and tokenization to have a fast, convenient and secure form of payment.

Tokenization has emerged as the leading defense in payment fraud and is the key factor for security in the mobile payment space. Tokenization basically takes the static 16 digit credit card number that we are all familiar with and replacing it with different credentials. In turn, limiting the impact of a data breach or card theft. These credential can be very specific meaning the are for a singular device and can be broken down to only be used for specific merchants or even specific goods and services.

What does this mean for the future? No business accepting payments should be without the ability to accept NFC payments. If you are not sure if your terminal or POS system is capable of taking these types of payments, speak with your credit card processing provider for more information. Most terminals being placed in the market today have this ability whether it was communicated to the merchant or not.

 

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