Visa Europe expands tokenisation service for cloud-based payments
Sandra Alzetta, Visa Europe
Visa Europe is expanding its Visa Europe Payment Tokenisation Service (VEPTS) for cloud-based payments.
VEPTS will be available for payment credentials such as banks’ own mobile payment apps, a variety of wearable and other connected devices, internet browser-based wallets, and retailer-specific checkout offerings such as Visa Checkout.
Sandra Alzetta, executive director product enablement for Visa Europe, says that by 2020 its projections are for one in five consumers to pay for items using their smartphone on a daily basis, and for payments on mobile or tablet to account for more than 50% of Visa transactions.
She adds: “Looking at contactless as an early indicator, where adoption has doubled and spend has trebled in the last year, we believe this projection could well be a conservative estimate.”
Last year, Banking Technology reported on Visa Europe’s announcement that the uptake of contactless payments in Europe climbed to more than one billion transactions. Visa cardholders spent €1.6 billion in March 2015 alone – a three-fold increase over the same period in 2014.
How it works
Visa Europe says tokenisation makes it possible to put sensitive data on a device by “devaluing” it, making it “worthless if it falls into the wrong hands”. In other words, when consumers make a payment with a tokenised payment service, a token is submitted into the payment process, rather than the cardholder’s account details.
