- Mary Kay Bowman, Head of Global Seller Solutions at VISA Inc., spoke at Business Insider's IGNITION: Redefining Retail conference on Tuesday about the changing payments landscape.
- As the retail industry becomes increasingly digital and data breaches become a major risk, transaction security becomes more imperative than ever.
- Bowman said that tokenization is a new technology that VISA believes can be an effective way to bolster security, saying that both buyers and sellers like it "because it just works".
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Protecting customers' financial information has never been more imperative.
As the retail industry becomes increasingly online, both buyers and sellers are looking for ways to make transactions more secure. Data breaches have been a major concern for both retailers and customers alike, and millions of consumers' credit card information has already been compromised.
Tokenization could be an easy and practical solution to bolstering the security of transactions, said Head of Global Seller Solutions at VISA, Inc., Mary Kay Bowman, at IGNITION: Redefining Retail, Business Insider's retail conference.
Tokenization is a technology that replaces customer information stored on POS systems with unique identifications. This method of data storage makes it much harder for hackers to access consumer data.
"The whole playing field is changing," said Bowman. She said that VISA doesn't have a horse in the race when it comes to e-commerce versus physical retail. That's not VISA's role, she said. Tokenization is a technology that Bowman hopes will be applicable no matter the kind of transaction.
"What our role in that is," said Bowman, "Is to support it all and make those transactions safe, secure, fast, and reliable."
"That's what sellers want from us, and that's what consumers want from us," Bowman continued. "Tokenization is something we think is driving a lot of the other experiences, because it just works."
Watch IGNITION: Redefining Retail live here.
