Kuala lumpur: The growing adoption of contactless transactions, especially in Asia Pacific, has enhanced payment security with tokenisation technology extending the same level of protection to digital, card-not-present environments. Visa’s regional risk officer for Asia Pacific, Stefaan D’Hoore, emphasized that tokenisation replaces a card number with a unique token that only works on a specific device and with a specific merchant, reducing its value to fraudsters.

According to BERNAMA News Agency, D’Hoore mentioned that tokenisation brings several benefits, such as improving the quality of information shared during the payment process, which boosts payment authorisation rates. He explained that this results in fewer unwanted declines for online payments and a significant reduction in payment fraud.

Tokenisation is a method that replaces sensitive data with non-sensitive substitutes, maintaining the type and length of the data. D’Hoore stated that Visa views tokenisation as crucial for strengthening payment security, collaborating with partners and clients to drive adoption. He noted that merchants who implement tokenisation often see up to a five percent increase in authorisation rates and a noticeable reduction in fraud cases.

Visa is focused on expanding tokenisation technology adoption across its network, which supports further innovation in other products. D’Hoore highlighted that last year, Visa surpassed the one billion mark in Asia-Pacific for tokens embedded in various devices and merchant websites.

In response to data breaches in Malaysia, D’Hoore highlighted Visa’s collaboration with issuing clients in Malaysia and the region to protect the payment ecosystem and build consumer trust. He added that Visa has invested significantly in strengthening the operational and cyber resilience of its core network, VisaNet, investing US$10 billion in technology and US$3 billion specifically in artificial intelligence over the past five years.