Visa issues tokenization guidance, clarifies rules around storage of card numbers

Visa on Wednesday released a four-page document that offers best practices for tokenization, the process by which 16-digit credit card numbers are replaced with unique symbols. The guidance is meant to reduce risk for merchants, vendors, service providers and acquiring banks. It covers such areas as detecting suspicious activity so attackers cannot compromise the token system. In addition on Wednesday, Visa, in conjunction with the National Retail Federation trade group, clarified its operating rules around storage of sensitive information. According to the card brand, issuing banks must accept a disguised or truncated card number on transaction receipts for dispute resolution. Also, merchants are permitted to store disguised or truncated card numbers to reduce the amount of data that could be retrieved by attackers. — DK