MeaWallet establishes single source for tokenization

Norwegian digital payments provider MeaWallet is offering a new payment tokenization solution that delivers Mastercard, Visa and American Express tokenization services through a single connection.

MeaWallet Merchant Tokenization connects merchants, payment service providers and acquirers to the Mastercard Digital Enablement Service, the Visa Token Service and the American Express Tokenization Service. It allows users to establish global interoperability and scalable tokenization platforms through one integration, as opposed to the separate connections most acquirers work through.

"Since 2013, MeaWallet has worked with the major payment schemes to deliver their payments technologies to financial institutions,” Lars Sandtorv, CEO of MeaWallet, said in a Tuesday press release. “Now, MeaWallet is one of just a handful of providers to extend its offering to enable merchants and PSPs to access the services of multiple major schemes without the technical friction associated with connecting to each platform.”

MeaWallet Merchant Tokenization conforms to the specifications and requirements of each payment scheme and is delivered as a fully hosted service from MeaWallet’s secure PCI-DSS compliant data center.

“Tokenization has become a cornerstone of secure digital payments and is a core focus for MeaWallet,” Sandtorv added. “We support banks, merchants and other financial institutions with both the knowledge and the technology solutions needed to simplify their implementation of tokenization services, so they can focus on delivering value added services and other digital features that differentiate them in the marketplace.”

Tokenization replaces sensitive card credentials, typically stored as card-on-file, with a merchant-specific token. In October 2018, Mastercard announced that it will enable token services on all cards by 2020 to provide safer online transactions.

The card brands' digital platforms comply with EMV Payment Tokenization, which utilizes tokens coupled with transaction cryptograms in order to bring EMV security to card-on-file transactions.

MeaWallet’s tokenization enables merchants to ensure customers' stored card payment details remain valid throughout the card expiry and reissuance process, without the customer needing to update them manually. This guards against the loss in sales that results from out-of-date card transactions being automatically declined. In a token-on-file model, the issuer ensures that new cards are automatically mapped to the merchant’s payment token, which removes the need for the customer to update credentials.