Glossary
Tokenisation
Tokenisation replaces a card number with a token, a reference that stands for the card in every later request, journal and report, while the number itself stays in a vault. A merchant charges the token for recurring and one-click payments without storing the card; a stolen token is useless outside the vault that issued it. Tokens come from the schemes, from acquirers and from the platform's own vault, and a vault can hold all three for one card.
Three kinds of tokens
Scheme tokens are issued by Visa, Mastercard and the others and bound to a merchant or a device; Apple Pay and Google Pay pay with them. Acquirer tokens are issued by an acquirer for the merchants it serves and work only there. Platform tokens are issued by the vault that holds the card and can map to the acquirer tokens behind them, which is what lets a stored card be charged through any acquirer the routing chooses.
Why it matters
Without tokens a merchant that stores cards is in the full scope of PCI DSS and tied to the acquirer that stored them; with tokens the card number never reaches the merchant, and changing acquirer does not lose the stored cards or the subscriptions on them.
On the platform
Tranzify’s vault encrypts the card number under keys from a key management service, issues its own token and keeps the acquirers’ tokens next to it, so recurring and one-click payments can be routed to any acquirer that knows the card and cascaded like any other payment.
Updated: 2026-11-08