Visa provisions more than 160 million CoF tokens in India

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Following the Reserve Bank of India's guidelines on CoF (card-on-file) tokenisation earlier this year, digital payments company Visa announced its successful provisioning of more than 160 million CoF tokens in India.

CoF tokenisation provides key benefits such as an improved payment success rate compared to non-tokenised cards, consumer and ecosystem security, and an enhanced checkout experience.

Sandeep Ghosh, Group Country Manager India and South Asia, Visa said, “As pioneers and advocates for tokenisation in payments, we are delighted to see its rapid adoption by the Indian payment industry. With the last 60 million token provisions taking less than three months to achieve, we are confident of this strong momentum continuing as the industry fully migrates to tokenised payments starting 1st October 2022.”

Under the RBI’s CoF tokenisation mandate, the actual data of the card is replaced by an encrypted digital token which then ensures seamless digital payments. This in turn gives cardholders greater confidence to authorise a higher number of transactions as compared to non-tokenised cards, a release from Visa noted.

In an era plagued by cyber fraud, the devaluation of sensitive card details alleviates the risk of data falling into the wrong hands, as only tokens are present in transit, across the ‘in-rest’ and ‘in-use’ phases.