Visa Issues over 4 Billion Tokens with Amount Surpassing Physical Visa Cards

Visa (NYSE: V) today announced that the company has now issued more than 4 billion network tokens worldwide through Visa Token Service (VTS), which will help secure digital payments and further accelerate ecommerce innovation and acceptance. 

This move nearly doubled Visa's token count in one year, surpassing the number of physical Visa cards in circulation worldwide. 

"Tokenization is a simple, yet powerful concept pioneered by Visa: conceal and devalue sensitive payment data to stay ahead of fraudsters and make digital payments more secure," said Jack Forestell, executive vice president and chief product officer at Visa. "The uptick in issuers, acquirers, merchants and consumers all transacting with Visa tokens, reinforces that the future of money is truly digital, and digital money must be built on trust."

Visa is innovating ahead of consumer demand through Visa Token Service, which replaces 16-digit Visa account numbers with a digital token only Visa can unlock, helping to protect the underlying account information from fraudsters and bad actors.

Visa analysis shows that across more than 8,600 issuers and 800,000 merchants, Visa tokens have led to a 28 percent reduction in fraud rates and a 3 percent increase in approval rates – increasing sales for merchants while saving them money on fraud-related expenses.

Visa's Cloud Token Framework (CTF) is designed to enhance security and increase approval rates for card-not-present transactions across multiple payment experiences and devices.

"This milestone is indicative of the continued investment Visa is making in safe, reliable and seamless transactions around the globe," said Forestell. "Continued adoption of tokenization will help enable Visa's mission of helping individuals, businesses and economies thrive."