First Data Corp. said more than 100,000 U.S. merchants are handling tractions through the TransArmor security service it launched in early September.
That was the three-month goal the processor set for itself when it rolled out the service after testing it. It uses a combination of tokenization (which replaces sensitive data with a less sensitive "token" for future reference) and encryption to secure transaction data as it passes through merchants' systems.
"After only three months of being in market, our TransArmor solution has been extremely well received by merchants of all sizes and business type. Reaching this milestone is monumental for First Data and illustrates the importance of data security to the merchant community," Mark Herrington, First Data's general manager of retail solutions, said in a press release Monday.
First Data, an Atlanta unit of the private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., said that more than 44 million transactions have been processed using TransArmor and about 750,000 transactions using it are conducted a day.
