The conventional wisdom is that when large vendors enter a niche market, those vendors "legitimize" that market. But the announcement that First Data and RSA Security are getting into the credit card tokenization business raises many issues beyond them simply "making" the tokenization market. Here is my first take on the implications of this announcement:
Pressure On The PCI SSC To Embrace Tokenization
The PCI Security Standards Council already commissioned Price-Waterhouse Coopers to do a study of tokenization, end-to-end encryption and other "beyond PCI" issues. The results will likely be discussed at the PCI SSC Community Meetings. That's great. Merchants, service providers and even QSAs want specific guidance about tokenization. This announcement and the weight of the players in the market should virtually guarantee that tokenization will be specifically addressed in the next release of PCI DSS, in addition to QSA training and other guidance from the SSC.
Pressure On Payment Processors And Gateways
I have said before that the number of companies offering tokenization will increase several-fold within a year. We've already seen about a dozen players enter the market in the last six months. I'm expecting 30 to 40 more announced packages over the next six months, as payment processors, gateways, encryption vendors and application vendors all vie to see who can remove credit card data from the merchant environment the fastest.
Tokenization Standards And Portability Will Be Hot Topics In 2010
The more options in the market, the more the demand for "token switching" will increase. Merchants who have entrusted their card data to Service Provider X will increasingly seek shorter duration contracts and have more specific demands about how they migrate their data from one tokenization provider to another.
Multi-Channel Options And Other Complexity Issues Will Emerge
Posted from StorefrontBackTalk
The PCI Security Standards Council already commissioned Price-Waterhouse Coopers to do a study of tokenization, end-to-end encryption and other "beyond PCI" issues. The results will likely be discussed at the PCI SSC Community Meetings. That's great. Merchants, service providers and even QSAs want specific guidance about tokenization. This announcement and the weight of the players in the market should virtually guarantee that tokenization will be specifically addressed in the next release of PCI DSS, in addition to QSA training and other guidance from the SSC.
I have said before that the number of companies offering tokenization will increase several-fold within a year. We've already seen about a dozen players enter the market in the last six months. I'm expecting 30 to 40 more announced packages over the next six months, as payment processors, gateways, encryption vendors and application vendors all vie to see who can remove credit card data from the merchant environment the fastest.
The more options in the market, the more the demand for "token switching" will increase. Merchants who have entrusted their card data to Service Provider X will increasingly seek shorter duration contracts and have more specific demands about how they migrate their data from one tokenization provider to another.
Because there are not currently any standards for either the form of a credit card token, how it is generated or how one token type can be converted to another (they can't, BTW), as more merchants realize this, they will raise concerns about being "locked in" to a particular tokenization approach. Smaller vendors will develop "token migration" or conversion tools, etc.
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