Martin Cox, a Strategic Product Marketing at Rambus, recently observed that technologies such as tokenization are steadily evolving as the mobile payments ecosystem matures.
“Now a security requirement for paying by smartphone, banks are faced with the challenge of implementing and managing tokenization,” he explained.
“This isn’t so arduous when the issuer is only connecting to one payment scheme’s token service provider (TSP) service to issue digital cards to one of the ‘OEM Pays’. However, with each new scheme integration, the challenge is compounded and a complex web of connections is created.”
As Cox notes, a standard interface to connect to the schemes’ TSPs has not yet been defined. This means each scheme has its own requirements, specifications and interfaces. Moreover, specifications are updated regularly, requiring banks to constantly maintain their systems to stay properly connected to the schemes.
“It is also in the schemes’ interests to do what they can to bring banks on board as quickly as possible and minimize the complexity of integration so that they can sell their tokenization services. This complexity gets in the way,” stated Cox. “This is why our experts have been working to minimize the pain for banks. Issuers can now manage the whole process through a single platform. Even better, they can let us worry about the updates to ensure alignment with the schemes’ latest requirements. This leaves banks able to focus on the important things, like delivering the best services to their customers.”
Indeed, Rambus recently introduced a versatile Token Gateway that allows banks to more easily integrate multiple mobile payment schemes. More specifically, issuing banks can now use a single software platform to manage tokenization activity across a range of ‘OEM Pay’ mobile wallets. The Token Gateway also effectively ensures banks are always in synch with the latest credit and debit platform requirements, while token service providers can use the platform to offer their own gateway services to banks.
In addition to a lifecycle management module – which is fundamental to the platform – banks can add a card asset module that facilitates the personalization and branding of digital cards. A token vault mirror can also be added to maintain a log of tokenized data in-house, enabling banks to check a transaction without having to contact the relevant scheme TSP.
Interested in learning more about Rambus and mobile payments? You can check out our mobile payments product page here or read our eBook on Tokenization:
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