Last year Apple revealed Apple Pay, its answer to mobile payment. Apple Pay runs on tokenization a safer way to send sensitive data like card account numbers. Tokenization has been posited as the answer to security concerns surrounded by mobile payments. A recent report from EMVCo champions the use of tokenization with not only Apple Pay, but with MasterCard, Discover, American Express, and UnionPay, JCB, and Visa. The report claims that consumer data security will be improved with tokenization. Plus tokenization is not meant to infringe upon the territory of traditional banking institutions as it is compatible with the current infrastructure and is complimentary to EMV chip specifications.
Tokenization technology’s potential is significant. It could be the payment processing solution to many merchants who have a difficult time establishing secure and consistent payment, like those in the adult industry. Tokenization and mobile payments will be a low hassle, quick way to get payment for adult merchants who often face discrimination in payment processing. Many adult entertainers and small businesses have had their accounts frozen using online payment solutions like PayPal due to the nature of their work. And it is difficult for them to get traditional payment processors to process checks or credit cards.
Although tokenization has been lauded as a secure technology, some question if it will be enough to secure online payment. Tokenization limits exposure of consumer data by keeping it in the hands of payment processors and banks. Mobile payment platforms like Apple can enable more rigorous identification features, like fingertip and face recognition. But tokenization still has some vulnerabilities. One particular issue could be network segmentation. To be secure, data processing systems must be separate from the tokenization system to prevent thieves from taking the algorithms that can be used to detokenize. Also hackers must be prevented from recovering the original PAN (Personal Account Number) from the token that is generated as a proxy.
Building a thriving adult merchant business is possible if merchants use technologies like tokenization to enable faster and more efficient payment processing. Adult merchants and other high risk merchants can use the help of experienced payment processors like eMerchantBroker.com to maintain and monitor their adult merchant accounts.