Card Tokenization

Card Tokenization is the process of replacing sensitive card information like card number, card expiry with a cryptographically generated random string, referred to as the card token. Once a card is tokenized, the generated card token can be used for processing payments as a substitute to the actual card details like card number and card expiry and cvv thus eliminating the issue of loss of sensitive card information while making card payments.

• Neither payment aggregators, payment gateways nor merchants cannot store card numbers on their servers even if they are PCI/DSS compliant
• Card networks and Issuing banks can only store card numbers and offer token provisioning services to other entities in the payment industry
• 30th September, 2022 is the deadline for all entities to comply with the RBI circular

Token Vault is a card tokenization solution. Any merchant offering the save card feature to their customers will have to do so by provisioning a token instead of saving the actual card number. Token Vault will help merchants to effortlessly migrate to the this RBI compliance requirement.

Token Vault is India’s first interoperable card tokenization solution. As a merchant, you can use Token Vault’s interoperability to securely process card payments across multiple payment gateway platforms and card networks.

Yes, Token Vault provides credit card tokenization and debit card tokenization. You can tokenize VISA debit and credit cards, and retrieve them whenever your customers try to access the saved cards.

Yes, Token Vault provides credit card tokenization and debit card tokenization. You can tokenize Mastercard debit and credit cards, and retrieve them whenever your customers try to access the saved cards.

PCI/DSS compliant merchants have to delete the already saved cards with them as RBI does not allow bulk tokenization of cards. Merchants who were saving the card number on their own servers, can simply integrate with Token Vault APIs of Cashfree Payments and continue processing saved cards after a one-time authentication by customers. In this case Cashfree Payments will act as token requestor on behalf of the merchant. Alternatively, merchant can also integrate with individual card schemes and become a token requestor themselves.

Cashfree Payments offers 2 types of checkout integrations
1) Standard Checkout & 2) Seamless Pro.

A. Merchants using Standard Checkout integration do not need to take any action. Cashfree Payments will automatically enable the saved card feature along with the ability to convert the card details (as customers enter the card) to unique tokens and then further process tokenized cards received from card networks. Customers having their cards already saved on the merchant site, will have to enter the card details, and do a one-time re-authentication for the first transaction on or after 1st July 2022 to continue using the saved card feature.

B. Merchants using Seamless Pro integration will have to update their APIs before 30th June 2022 to save and process card transactions. Check out API documentation. Once API has been updated, customers having their cards already saved on the merchant site, will have to enter the card details, and do a one-time re-authentication for the first transaction on or after 1st July 2022 to continue using the saved card feature.

Merchants are allowed to store only the last 4 digits of the actual card number, card scheme and issuing bank name. They cannot store other details like card BIN, card expiry or CVV.

No, merchants will not be able to get the actual card number back from the tokenized cards. Only schemes and issuing banks will be able to do so.

No, explicit consent of customer is mandatory while provisioning token for the card.

If 2FA fails even after the customer had given consent to tokenize the card, merchants will not be able to provision token and save the card.

Yes, the token reference number of tokens provisioned through Cashfree Payments will be saved with us only. However, merchants can fetch the card network tokens from us and use them for payment on any other payment aggregator. It is not possible to migrate cards provisioned through Cashfree Payments on another payment gateway.

No, tokenization is limited only for card payments. All card payments like credit, debit, prepaid and corporate credit cards are impacted.

No, there is no impact as such on card payments where the customer enters the complete card number details. Only in cases where merchants or payment aggregators were saving cards, card tokenization will come into effect.