Razorpay launches ‘TokenHQ’, multi-network tokenisation solution in partnership with Mastercard, RuPay and Visa – Times of India

Razorpay has announced the launch of ‘Razorpay TokenHQ’, a multi-network Card-on-File (CoF) Tokenisation solution. It claims to be be a turnkey solution for businesses, allowing their customers to continue experiencing the convenience of saved card transactions, now with added security and in compliance with RBI guidelines. TokenHQ will work across all major card networks including Mastercard, RuPay and Visa.
Earlier this year, RBI issued a new set of guidelines that disallow businesses, payment aggregators, and acquiring banks, from storing customers’ credit/debit/prepaid card information. The new guidelines allow only card networks & card issuers to store customer card information, and sanctions businesses to use tokens for offering saved card experience during online payments. Card-On-File (COF) tokenisation is the process of turning sensitive cardholder data into a string of randomly generated numbers called a “token”, which has no meaningful value if breached. All stakeholders are required to ensure full compliance with the tokenisation framework by 31st December 2021.
In the past year, India witnessed a growth of over 2x in the adoption of digital payments, leading to the RBI bringing in a fresh set of regulations that safeguards consumer interests. The card tokenisation framework ensures that a customer’s card information rests only with the customer, the card network, and the issuing bank, which minimises the risk of card data leaks significantly. However, in the absence of tokenisation, customers will have to enter their card information manually, every time they transact online. This may not be convenient for some customers and increases the chances of error in entering data leading to transaction failures.
Tokenisation, as a technology solution bridges this inconvenience gap and enables customers and businesses to sustain “business as usual”, by converting customer card information into a coded “token”. Razorpay TokenHQ is available for all businesses; and merchants using other payment gateways can also use Razorpay’s solution to tokenise cards and route payments using their existing payment partnerships.
Using Razorpay TokenHQ, businesses would be able to create, process, delete and modify tokens for online card payments with customers’ consent. Razorpay TokenHQ enables the company’s existing customers (on standard and custom checkouts) to support card tokenisation at zero cost and effort. Merchants with customized setups can start integrating Razorpay TokenHQ immediately via our developer friendly APIs.