HTNG Produces Payment Tokenization Specification

HTNG’s Payments Workgroup developed a tokenization solution that defines messages used to convert cardholder information into tokens that ultimately reduce the risk of processing credit card data.

Converting payment information into a token is referred to as “tokenization,” which removes valuable payment card information from business systems of a venue. Tokenization replaces sensitive credit card information with data that is useless to cyber thieves. Tokens can be safely transmitted in messages and stored in databases, while the sensitive credit card data is stored separately in a secure data vault.

Tokenization reduces the number of hotel systems handling sensitive payment card information. Tokenization is expected to reduce a hotel’s cost to maintain compliance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) rules. This cost reduction will occur by limiting the number of systems vulnerable to potential loss of payment information and reducing the systems in scope for PCI auditing.

This publication replaces the previously issued Data Proxy Specification and joins the collection of documents defining the HTNG Secure Payments Specifications.

The Payments Workgroup was led by Co-chairs John Bell of Ajontech, LLC and Rob Martin of Ingenico.

Download the Payment Tokenization Specification here.