Digital payments firm Visa on Wednesday launched Card-on-File (CoF) tokenization services in India in line with the recently issued guidelines by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to secure customers’ financial data.

Card-on-File (CoF) tokenization provides two key benefits – consumer and ecosystem security, and an enhanced checkout experience. Launched in partnership with Juspay, India’s first CoF tokenization service is now available across e-commerce leaders such as Grofers, BigBasket, and MakeMyTrip. 

“Having launched CoF tokenization services in over 130 countries globally, we are confident of the technology’s ability to build a safe, secure, and seamless environment for digital payments,” TR Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, India, and South Asia, Visa, said in a statement.

Tokenisation is the process of replacing credit or debit card details with a unique set of characters or a ‘token’ that enables payments to be processed without exposing any sensitive account details that could potentially breach the security and privacy of the consumers.

The tokenization system generates 16 random characters, called ‘token’, to replace the original credit card number while online shopping.

The tokenization system returns the 16-digit random characters to the e-commerce site to replace the customer’s credit card number in the system.

Card-on-File (CoF) tokenization provides two key benefits — consumer and ecosystem security and an enhanced checkout experience.

These new guidelines are expected to enhance consumer trust in e-commerce payments, ensure a seamless transaction experience as well allow card issuers the comfort of authorizing a higher number of transactions. 

TR Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, India, and South Asia, Visa, said, “The RBI’s move to allow CoF tokenization for e-commerce payments will revolutionize digital payments across India’s e-commerce platforms. Having launched CoFtokenization services in over 130 countries globally, we are confident of the technology’s ability to build a safe, secure, and seamless environment for digital payments. This will be critical in building consumer trust on merchant platforms and reassure them of the safety of their payment credentials on these platforms.”