The Importance of Vaulting and Tokenization for Omnichannel Retailers

When the pandemic hit last year, retailers who previously relied on physical stores looked to reevaluate their digital strategies. Services like curbside pickup, home delivery and buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) exploded. In fact, the share of retailers offering curbside pickup jumped to 44%.

This burst of digital transformation in the retail industry isn’t stopping anytime soon. McKinsey found that nearly three-quarters of people who have tried curbside, BOPIS or delivery want to continue using those services after the pandemic ends. Omnichannel capabilities have become absolutely necessary these days to meet consumers’ demands.

To support omnichannel services, retailers must integrate omnichannel payments support to make the payments process seamless across all channels. Enabling vaulting and payment tokens allows retailers to drive a better customer experience. It also makes digital shopping experiences across channels faster and easier than ever.

Store Encrypted Card Information Across All Channels

When placing a curbside or BOPIS order, customers enter payment details online to confirm the order. Customers can then store payments data within their customer accounts for future purchases. To make this seamless, retailers need to be able to recall the information at the POS at the time of pickup.

To configure this payments setup, retailers can utilize vaulting to securely store cardholder data as part of a tokenization scheme. Tokenization, or the process of switching out sensitive payment data with randomized data, is an omnichannel solution that can support transactions from any channel in the merchant’s ecosystem.

With these components in place, retailers have the ability to support robust omnichannel transaction processing environments. Retailers simply use the same vaulting application across multiple pay fronts without having to create separate interpretations. So when the next time a customer makes a purchase, they don’t have to enter their cardholder information again, creating a seamless omnichannel journey.

Issue Tokens for Multiple Scenarios

Tokens can be used across several systems, including in-store POS, eCommerce services, loyalty and customer service systems. They can also be used for several types of transactions, including initiate sale transactions, refunds, adjustments, recurring billing, eCommerce card-on-file sale transactions, mobile payments and loyalty transactions.

Omnichannel merchants can store encrypted card information along with customer-associated permanent or temporary tokens to speed order processing for online transactions. They can also use the information to recognize when a customer buys another item. This creates opportunities to automatically apply discounts or loyalty points. It also benefits the retailer by reducing its PCI DSS scope and associated compliance, offering end-to-end security between the merchant and service provider.

Create a Seamless Omnichannel Payments Experience With OLS

The growth of digital shopping channels makes it more important than ever for retailers to create a true omnichannel experience. With omnichannel vaulting and tokenization, retailers can provide seamless and secure payments across channels. Customers will also enjoy a frictionless purchase journey from start to finish.

OLS has a proprietary tokenization solution that can integrate with processor tokenization schemes. With OLS, omnichannel merchants can utilize card-based, permanent tokens to ensure that a consistent token value is referenced every time that the same cardholder account is processed, whether online or in store.

To learn more about how OLS can work with you today to define the best way to integrate token usage for your business, contact us today.