The local office of the US digital payment service provider Visa Inc yesterday announced a collaboration with Taipei-based start-up Cherri Tech Inc (喬睿科技) to simplify and facilitate online shopping.
Established in 2015, Cherri Tech is the first Visa-certified global token service provider and its online payment tokenization service leverages Visa’s token service to strengthen online payment security, Visa Taiwan said.
“Taiwanese are already familiar with tokens, which are widely used in mobile and wearable contactless payments,” Visa country manager for Taiwan Marco Ma (麻少華) said.
The cooperation would extend the security and convenience to online shopping and support the Taiwanese government’s drive to promote mobile payment, lifting its penetration rate to 90 percent by 2025, Ma said.
The Visa token service can be applied to a wide variety of payment scenarios.
Cherri Tech’s credit card tokenization service replaces sensitive account information, such as the 16-digit primary account number, with digital identifiers known as tokens, Ma said, adding that it stores and manages these tokens on behalf of merchants.
Citing a survey by the Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute, Ma said that 45 percent of purchases by Taiwanese consumers last year were made online, suggesting heavy dependence on e-commerce and the increasing importance of a secure payment platform.
Cherri Tech’s tokenization service also helps automatically update credit card expiration dates after a credit card is reissued or replaced, sparing customers the hassle of making the update themselves or getting rejected at the point of payment when their cards expire, Visa Taiwan said.
“This provides customers a convenient and seamless payment experience when they shop online,” he said.
Nearly 32 percent of shoppers abandon their shopping carts due to bad checkout experiences, Cherri Tech said.
Cherri Tech has acquired international level 1 information security certification, which allows the start-up to manage credit card details on behalf of shoppers through the tokenization technology.
Hackers or online merchants will not have access to the information, Visa Taiwan said.
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