Imagine a future where machines are capable of conducting commerce with other machines. A world in which every internet-connected device can accept and make payments.
This is no longer the stuff of science-fiction. Today, a vast, evolving ecosystem of connected devices is already revolutionizing commerce. Known as the Internet of Things, this expanding universe of interoperable devices is making payments possible in everything from connected cars and wearables to smart homes and cities.
We’ve created the Visa Ready program for IoT to ensure that all of these extraordinary new payment solutions meet Visa’s security standards and specifications, and to help facilitate faster global acceptance of IoT payment innovation.
Tokenization can be the foundation for enabling payments on devices.
IoT payments give us an opportunity to extend Visa’s platform into an ever-growing array of devices that don’t require the traditional card and terminal.
To make IoT payments work, we take the account number on your plastic card and turn it into a digital credential that can be “provisioned” via SDKs into any type of internet-connected device. We call this concept “tokenization”.
It’s remarkable to consider just how radically payments have transformed over the last 60 years. For decades, credit cards made our lives simpler during face-to-face transactions, in which both the merchant and consumer were in the same location. Payments took a giant leap forward when it became possible to pay merchants remotely by entering our credit card details over the phone, then on our computers (eCommerce), and eventually from smartphones (mCommerce) that fit in the palm of our hand.
Now, tokenization has digitized the card, and introduced an extraordinary new era in payment capabilities. Many of us are already making tokenized payments daily using our mobile wallets. In addition to mobile solutions, these five IoT categories will drive tokenized payments: Human, Connected Car, Smart Home, Evolving Retail, and Cities.
