Visa Cardholders will soon be able to consent to the sharing of their data with retailers using new “data tokens”, as Visa seeks to remain competitive in an increasingly crowded and digitized market.
The tokens, which will be rolled out by Visa and participating banks this year, will allow businesses to request a customer’s consent to get personalized offers in real time when shopping, using AI-powered information based on transaction data, Visa announced Wednesday at the Annual Visa Payments Forum in San Francisco.
Banks will also receive a token indicating where a customer’s data has been shared and display it in their mobile app, so users can decide whether they want to continue sharing data with that merchant or revoke access.
“The industry is at a tipping point: new technologies like Generation AI are rapidly changing the way we shop and manage our finances,” Jack Forestell, chief product and strategy officer at Visa, said in a statement.
The move is part of a recent trend toward open banking among card providers and financial institutions. As payments become increasingly interconnected and digitized across all spaces, open banking allows users to share their transaction data with institutions other than their banks, including retailers. Mastercard, Visa’s biggest competitor, Acquired finesse in November 2020 as part of its foray into the growing practice.
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Visa, which has been around since 1958, is also looking to differentiate itself from some of its more modern and digitally savvy fintech rivals, like Stripe and Plaid. Visa is still first in the world largest credit card issuerwith 4.3 billion cards worldwide, and more than 2.9 billion debit cards in circulation worldwide.
Visa on Wednesday unveiled a litany of new “truly digital payment card” offerings that Forestell says will “bring consumers into a more personalized, more convenient and more secure future.”
Among them is a new passkey service, which confirms a customer’s identity and authorizes online payments using facial or fingerprint recognition technology, replacing passwords and passcodes. unique. Forestell said the password “will represent a massive paradigm shift in our industry because it confirms identity without interrupting the payment experience.” It will also add another level of security to online payments, which are subject to seven times more fraud reports than in-person payments, according to the company.
It also announced it would introduce expanded contact payment options, including the ability to turn any device into a point of sale.
