Tokenization¶

The Worldline Tokenization Service provides the ability to store Card details or Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) account details for later reference. Instead of working with real card numbers, the client will receive a reference number that can be used later for payment processing. The reference is a random number and is unique for the card or SEPA for each merchant.

Why Tokenization¶

Tokenization has many use cases, among others:

Recurring Payments - The ability for a consumer to select a previously used card number at a merchant, without requiring either consumer or merchant to keep track of the card number.
Subscriptions - Billing for subscriptions ordered by a consumer.
Market specific requirements.

Options for tokenization¶

Generally, the consumer enters a card number, expiry date, CVC/CVV2 and other information during a purchase or registration. The tokenization process allows storing necessary card holder information that is needed later for processing with that card again referenced by a token.

Migration from a Payment Service Provider¶

Worldline supports migration of existing tokens from other Payment Service Providers, without requiring the merchant to gain access to the card holder data, thus keeping PCI DSS at the discretion of the PSP and Worldline.

Multi-use token vs Single-use tokens¶

Worldline supports both multi-use and single-use tokens.

When multi-use tokens are requested, the tokenization service issues the same token, provided the same mid, cardNumber, and expirationDate are sent to Worldline.
When single-use token is requested, the tokenization service issues a new token identifier each time, regardless of any previous tokenization of the card.

The most commonly used method is multi-use tokens.

The merchant is assigned a unique merchant ID when integrating with Worldline. In most cases it is enough with a single merchant ID, but there are cases where it is practical to have several. Worldline supports token sharing across multiple merchant IDs, given that the merchant is set up for token sharing. The token is still stored and owned by one merchantId, but the token identifier can be recalled by any merchantId that is part of the token sharing.

Token identifier¶

When a merchant calls for tokenization service, Worldline generates a token identifier and return it to the merchant. The merchant can also determine the token identifier in order to keep existing references to the card that the merchant may already have in its system.