NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Visa says its move to phase out bank-issued alternate PANs and promote tokenization as specified by EMVCo–including its own Visa Token Service–is an effort to capitalize on the proliferation of Internet of Things devices that could be used for payments.
But the push also could fuel more suspicions that Visa is seeking to pre-empt banks and third-party vendors from using their own tokenization services, in a maneuver to maintain the predominance of the Visa network as more transactions move to smartphones and other devices. UPDATE: Visa would allow EMVCo-specified tokenization from third-party vendors or banks, in addition to its own tokenization service, but it's not clear how many besides Visa are ready for this. END UPDATE.
One vendor told NFC Times Monday that his firm had received Visa’s revised cloud-based payments or related specifications last week and that the specifications do not appear to support alternate PANs any longer. “In previous specs, both alternate PANs and tokens are addressed as account parameters, but now they removed all alternate PAN references from the specs.”
