Visa Prepares Tokenisation, mPOS Services for Nigeria

VISA Cards has announced its plan to launch tokenisation and mPOS services customized for the needs of the Nigerian market.
Tokenisation technology, Nigeria Communication gathered, will be at the heart of new mobile payment solutions and will become one of the best data protection and fraud prevention methods available.
The new service already available for financial institutions in Europe from mid-April 2015, is part of Visa’s developed service to meet an increasing demand from consumers to use their latest smartphones and wearable devices for payments.
Speaking at VisaTechFeed, a Visa Card-Bloggers meeting, Mr. Ade Ashaye, country manager, West Africa, Visa Cards, said that working with Visa Cards, financial institutions in Nigeria and West African region in general, will be able to respond to the rapidly changing environment, providing their customers with more convenient and secured payment models in a cost-effective way.
The tokenisation service protects customer data, substituting the payment account information found on a plastic card with a series of numbers that can be used to authorise payment, mainly online, without exposing actual account details.
He said, “Your money matters to us. That’s why we keep finding ways to secure your Visa card from fraudsters. So, Tokenization is an upcoming technology that protects your Visa card number when shopping online.
He said that Tokenization, mPOS and more convenient and protected payment technologies will soon be unveiled in Nigeria.
Tokenization in particular supports the continuing fight against fraud, allowing financial institutions to control the environments where the token can be use.
For example, a token set up only for contactless payments cannot be used to make an on-line purchase. Additionally, if a mobile device is lost or stolen, a token can be easily and promptly disabled.
“Challenges some of our Nigerian customers face include some merchants not trusting the country but we are overcoming this,” Ashaye added.