What’s Visa Doing?
After the credit card breach at Target, it was quite obvious that card issuers had to act. But what were they supposed to do? A card has a 16-digit number that identifies it. You must use it to make a payment, and there’s really no other way around that. This is the situation we’re faced with. Once you give away that number, your bank account is at the mercy of the site you’re ordering from. It’s why a very large number of people on the internet are wary of making payments through their credit card. To alleviate the situation, Visa has come up with a potentially brilliant idea known as the Visa Token Service.
How Visa’s Token Service Works
In order to understand why I called Visa’s latest move “potentially brilliant”, you will need to understand how their service works. It’s a bit simple, actually. Instead of using your credit card number, Visa will generate a unique token for your transactions. The website, instead of storing your actual CC number, will store that token and that’s the end of it! The idea is that if the website is breached, the hacker looking through your account data will only find that token.
Does Visa’s Token Service Raise The Bar on Online Payment Security?
The Visa Token Service may be a game changer with respect to making your online payments safer. Considering how often companies have their credit card data breached – and how far-reaching these breaches can become – it’s about time someone addressed the issue with a sensible solution. Is the Token Service such a solution?
Conclusion
So, in a way, tokens may revolutionize online payment security. However, this doesn’t mean that the water is safe to jump into. You should still make smart decisions on what you do with your new token and ensure that it’s in the hands of firms that care about their customers. If you feel that there’s more to say here, please leave a comment below with your thoughts!
