Fintech firm Razorpay on Friday announced a new a tokenisation solution for businesses that will allow their end-customers to have the convenience of saved card transactions with added security and in compliance with the RBI guidelines. The ‘Razorpay TokenHQ’ will work across all major card networks including Mastercard, RuPay and Visa, and almost the entire base of five million businesses using Razorpay’s services will be ready to support tokenised card transactions, a statement said.

In a bid to further enhance the safety of online transactions, the RBI has issued a set of guidelines that disallow businesses, payment aggregators, and acquiring banks from storing customers’ credit/debit/prepaid card information. The new guidelines allow only card networks and card issuers to store customer card information, and sanctions businesses to use tokens for offering saved card experience during online payments.

Card-On-File (COF) tokenisation is the process of turning sensitive cardholder data into a string of randomly generated numbers called “token”, which has no meaningful value if breached. All stakeholders are required to ensure full compliance with the tokenisation framework by December 31, 2021.

“To help millions of Indian businesses comply with the new RBI guidelines, Razorpay has announced the launch of ‘Razorpay TokenHQ’…Razorpay TokenHQ is available for all businesses; and merchants using other payment gateways can also use Razorpay’s solution to tokenise cards and route payments using their existing payment partnerships,” Razorpay said in a statement.

The card tokenisation framework ensures that a customer’s card information rests only with the customer, the card network, and the issuing bank, which minimises the risk of card data leaks significantly.

However, in the absence of tokenisation, customers will have to enter their card information manually every time they transact online. This leads to friction for the customers and increases the chances of error in entering data leading to transaction failures.

Tokenisation, as a technology solution, bridges this inconvenience gap and enables customers and businesses to sustain business as usual, by converting customer card information into a coded “token”.

“The RBI has been making great strides to enhance the security and convenience of digital payments in India. Newer regulations offer tremendous opportunities for us to innovate and develop localised solutions that work well for Indian businesses,” Razorpay CTO and co-founder Shashank Kumar said.

Tokenisation is one such regulatory development, and Razorpay TokenHQ is a homegrown solution that will enable businesses to continue to offer seamless payments while ensuring individuals have control over their card data, he added.

“There are over 950 million debit and credit cards in India and this number will only grow given the rise of non-cash transactions in India’s hinterlands. We hope to see a lot of developments in building smart, secure fintech solutions for businesses and their end-users in the times ahead,” he said.

Using Razorpay TokenHQ, businesses would be able to create, process, delete and modify tokens for online card payments with customers’ consent.

Razorpay TokenHQ enables the company’s existing customers (on standard and custom checkouts) to support card tokenisation at zero cost and effort, the statement said.