Paytm announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary Paytm Payments Services Ltd (PPSL) has made strides with its card-on-file tokenization or “Paytm Token Gateway”. The company has partnered with platforms such as Myntra, Oyo, Domino’s and others, while also joining hands with payment giants like Visa, Mastercard and RuPay. With the partnership, the card on file tokenization service will be available for all of Paytm’s consumers and merchants. It is aligned with the Reserve Bank of India’s guidelines which said that “saved cards” feature won’t be allowed on a merchant network anymore.
A tokenized card transaction is considered to be safer as the user’s actual card details are not shared with the merchant. Instead, tokenization makes way for the card’s details to be stored as a unique, irreversible ‘digital token’ instead of a 16-digit number. This digital token ensures that a user’s card details remain only with the user and is not shared with merchants or any third party payment processor. Instead the details are only shared with the issuing bank and the affiliated network. It will also require explicit customer consent via additional authentication.
This makes way for safe and secure payments for end customers and also helps in mitigating fraud. Without the card tokenization feature, users will have to feed their entire 16-digit credit or debit card number everytime they do an online payment or transaction.
It is especially critical for e-commerce companies as it will allow them to offer their customers the ease of tokenizing debit and credit cards. This means end customers can continue to shop via the saved cards feature, which allows faster checkout.
As per the RBI’s guidelines, all merchants/ecommerce stores have to comply with the new card-on-file tokenization feature by December 31, 2021.
Praveen Sharma, MD & CEO, Paytm Payments Services Ltd. said, “Tokenization is the future of digital payments and also ensures safety, as a user’s card details are not shared with anyone. Our merchant partners can now offer seamless, secure payments to their users. At Paytm, it is of paramount importance to ensure secure digital payments and we are happy to offer Paytm Token Gateway to India’s merchants and online e-commerce platforms along with our partners Visa, Mastercard and Rupay.”
