Visa Launches Token Service in Georgia

TBILISI-Visa today announced the launch of Visa Token Service in Georgia – an innovative technology that provides a secure environment to help drive innovation in online and mobile commerce. The 1st in Georgia Visa Token Service program was launched in partnership with the Bank of Georgia.

Visa Token Service replaces sensitive payment account information found on plastic cards with a digital account number or “token”. Because “tokens” do not carry a consumer’s payment account details, such as the 16-digit account number, they can be safely stored by online merchants or on mobile devices to facilitate ecommerce and mobile payments. To try new service Visa cardholders need to use NFC-enabled mobile devices, running on the Android operating system (version 4.4 or later).

“Consumers are getting more and more connected and this rise in digital connections impacts all aspects of the modern life, payments are not an exception. Increased connectivity in many ways transforming consumers’ commerce experience and offers them many options to transact, both offline and online,” said Dmytro Krepak, Visa Country Manager for Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia. “With Visa Token Service consumers can shop anywhere, on any device, with confidence. In Georgia where each fourth Visa card is issued with contactless functionality and each second Visa transaction goes contactless, we expect a fast adoption of Visa Token Service”.

Visa Token Service provides a seamless experience for consumers making purchases online and with mobile devices, while preserving the integrity of the Visa payment transaction. Key benefits of Visa Token Service include:

• Consumer Protection: Tokens replace the 16-digit account information found on plastic cards with a numeric substitute. This new identifier is called a digital account number and it can facilitate payment transactions without sharing sensitive personal account information.

• Customized Usage: Tokens can be limited to specific merchants, mobile devices or types of purchases – providing another form of innovation and security.

• Convenience and Cost Effectiveness: Tokens linked to lost or stolen mobile devices can be instantly reissued without changing account numbers or reissuing plastic cards.

• Easy Processing: Tokens are based on existing International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards and can therefore be processed and routed by merchants, acquirers and issuers like traditional card payments.

For more information visit: www.visa.com/digitalsolutions and www.visanewscissee.com.