One97 Communication Limited, which owns the brand Paytm, said on Thursday it has made significant progress in the RBI’s card-on-file tokenisation initiative. The company has tokenised 28 million cards — including VISA, Mastercard and RuPay — as a way to make online card transactions safe and secure.
This will enable Paytm to purge saved card data ahead of the RBI deadline. In September 2021, the RBI prohibited merchants from storing customer card details on their servers with effect from January 1, 2022. The central bank mandated the adoption of card-on-file (CoF) tokenisation as an alternative to card storage. This deadline was extended to June 30.
Online players must delete credit and debit card data stored on their platforms and use tokens instead to secure the card details of customers.
Currently, tokenised cards account for 80 per cent of monthly active cards on the Paytm app. It enables faster checkout and at par or higher success rates compared to saved cards.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder and CEO, Paytm, said, “Paytm is committed to safe and secure online payments, RBI’s tokenisation efforts are a key milestone for the industry. We recognised the need for tokenised cards and implemented it on Paytm app. We are seeing incredible success and this will go a long way in bringing India’s payment system online while also making it trustworthy and safe for customers.”
Tokenisation essentially replaces credit and debit card details with a “token” — a unique code for a combination of card, token requestor and device. In a tokenised transaction, card details are not shared with the merchant. In the absence of a token, customers have to key in their name, 16-digit card number, expiry date and CVV each time they buy something online.