Visa Tokens Surpass Physical Visa Cards in Circulation

Visa today announced that the company has  now issued more than 4 billion network tokens worldwide through Visa Token Service (VTS), marking a major milestone in its proprietary offering to help secure digital payments and further accelerate ecommerce innovation and acceptance.

This historic milestone, which nearly doubled Visa’s token count in one year, surpasses the number of physical Visa cards in circulation worldwide. This milestone underscores the powerful security that tokens provide to merchants, issuers and consumers alike.

“Tokenization is a simple, yet powerful concept pioneered by Visa: conceal and devalue sensitive payment data to stay ahead of fraudsters and make digital payments more secure,” said Jack Forestell, executive vice president and chief product officer at Visa. “The uptick in issuers, acquirers, merchants and consumers all transacting with Visa tokens, reinforces that the future of money is truly digital, and digital money must be built on trust.”

E-commerce volume has grown by more than 50 percent since the onset of the pandemic. But with the convenience of online shopping comes increased consumer expectations and demand for simple and safe transactions. Visa is innovating ahead of consumer demand through Visa Token Service, which replaces 16-digit Visa account numbers with a digital token only Visa can unlock, helping to protect the underlying account information from fraudsters and bad actors.

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In Romania, the number of transactions with Visa tokenized cards increased between June 2021 and June 2022 three times faster than all Visa transactions at the national level. Tokenization is at the heart of mobile phone payments, and this data shows the enthusiasm with which Romanians have adopted the new safer and more reliable payment technologies.

Tokens: The Security Guards of Online Shopping

Tokens are the unsung heroes of ecommerce which the entire payments ecosystem can benefit from, with issuers, acquirers, merchants, and consumers all seeing a range of benefits including reduced fraud, ease of use across devices and more.

Visa analysis shows that across more than 8,600 issuers and 800,000 merchants, Visa tokens have led to a 28 percent reduction in fraud rates and a 3 percent increase in approval rates – increasing sales for merchants while saving them money on fraud-related expenses.

The Future of Authentication, Anchored by Tokens

In an age where most of our financial lives exist in the cloud, advanced technology helps ensure customer data is protected wherever transactions take place. Authentication 2.0 – the future of consumer protection – is anchored by tokens and tools such as Visa’s Cloud Token Framework (CTF), which is designed to enhance security and increase approval rates for card-not-present transactions across multiple payment experiences and devices.

“This milestone is indicative of the continued investment Visa is making in safe, reliable and seamless transactions around the globe,” said Forestell. “Continued adoption of tokenization will help enable Visa’s mission of helping individuals, businesses and economies thrive.”