In the midst of a boom in online commerce, one of the biggest e-commerce transaction processors globally has agreed to support both a Visa Inc. service that masks users’ card credentials and a streamlined online checkout technology offered by all four major card networks.
FIS Inc. said Thursday its Worldpay processing unit will switch on Click to Pay, a so-called common buy button that allows users of Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express cards to check out without entering details such as card and shipping data. FIS acquired Worldpay last year in a deal valued at $43 billion.
In a related move, Worldpay will enable access to Visa’s token-management service, which replaces actual card account credentials with strings of data that would be meaningless if intercepted by hackers. The processor said the tokenization service will be available to all clients internationally via a single integration and will handle both Visa and Worldpay tokens.
“This new token-management service approach changes the rules on tokenization by unifying a variety of tokens and data types, making token management simpler for online merchants who are looking for more security and seamless payment experiences,” said Nicole Jass, senior vice president of product at FIS, in a statement. “Merchants and shoppers will both benefit from this increased level of security, which will help protect sensitive data across the entire payments ecosystem.”
Transactions via e-commerce and mobile devices have been growing rapidly since the onset of Covid-19 early this year. PSCU, a major processor for U.S. credit unions, reported early this week that 54.7% of its credit card purchase volume and 46.8% of its transactions are now card-not-present, up 8.6 and 10 percentage points year-over-year, respectively. The corresponding shares for debit are 42.2%, up 7.8 points, and 31%, up 7.4 points.
Worldpay ranks among the largest e-commerce transaction processors globally. Overall, for online, mobile, and point-of-sale business, the company handles more than 40 billion transactions yearly for more than 1 million merchants, according to the company.