Hidden Insights Available Through Network Tokenization

We've touted the standard advantages of network tokenization time and time again: higher approval rates (an average of 2.1% according to Mastercard), lower fraud, and better customer experiences. These benefits are huge, but believe it or not, they don't actually tell the entire story! There exists an often-overlooked upside to network tokenization that unlocks powerful new use cases: the ability to access issuer-level information about the underlying payment account.

You can learn a lot of network-level details about a payment method and the customer wielding it from BIN data—details like country, currency, card type, and card product. But did you realize there's more data to be found? When you provision a network token from the major card brands, you can receive cardholder metadata at the issuer level for the tokenized payment method. That metadata can fuel smarter decision-making, better customer support, and higher customer retention through improved checkout experiences. Let's dig into how your business can take meaningful action with this metadata to further boost the value of your network tokenized credentials.

Enhanced Transaction Linking with Payment Account Reference (PAR)

One key piece of the metadata returned through network tokenization is the Payment Account Reference (PAR). A PAR is a persistent, unique identifier that links transaction events associated with a PAN to those made with its network token. Merchants leverage PAR in many ways, including to streamline transactions for recurring customers and increase security of sensitive payment information. Regulations like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) actually promote using identifiers like PAR to minimize exposure of sensitive customer data.

The persistent nature of PAR not only helps in tracing and linking transactions across systems, but also adds a layer of operational efficiency and security to payment processing. When you incorporate network tokenization into your payments operations, you have easier access to these benefits!

Reassuring Customers with Card Art

In a world where most customers have more than one credit card, it’s reasonable to assume your repeat customers won’t always remember which of theirs is saved on file with your business. Displaying card art—a digital image representing the card’s brand, type, and product—in their account can make a big difference. Not only does it reassure customers you have the right card on file to complete their purchase, it also confirms you have the most up-to-date details in the event their old card was recently replaced due to expiration, loss, or theft.

As with PAR, card art is included in the metadata returned through network tokenization. Whether you’re tokenizing a payment method for the first time or requesting an update on the underlying credentials, you can receive this card art and display it back to the customer in their online account. With this one piece of extra information, you can boost customer confidence in transacting with you, thereby improving customer experiences and conversion rates.

Smarter Support for High-Value Transactions

When you authorize funds on a customer's debit card—especially for a product or service with a higher price tag—a lingering hold on the required amount can stall a sale. For example, consider a situation in which a customer attempts to book a week-long stay at a hotel, resulting in the hotel putting a sizable hold on their debit card; should the customer then realize they entered the arrival date incorrectly and they need to start over, they might have to wait until the authorization for the first attempt drops before they have the available funds to rebook. That wait period can be just long enough to drive the customer to instead book with a competing hotel!

Some merchants address this by having customer service agents call the issuing bank to manually release the auth or advise the customer to do this themselves. To do that, they need two things: the auth code and the issuing bank’s customer service number. That phone number isn’t available through standard BIN data, but it is returned as part of the issuer metadata from network tokenization! If the hotel had provisioned a network token for the customer's payment method, the agent would have the necessary information to act quickly and resolve the underlying issue, thereby facilitating conversion.

Proactive Checkout Guidance for Certain Payment Methods

If you analyze your incoming transaction data segmented by payment method—perhaps, using Pagos' data visualization and insights platform—you'll likely identify certain payment methods performing better than others. This can be especially true with different transaction types, such as recurring or subscription payments. For example, Apple Cash, Cash App, and Venmo payments work great for one-time, customer-initiated transactions, but can fail when used for merchant-initiated recurring charges. To optimize performance and conversion, you can proactively suggest alternative payment methods at checkout to those users.

To perform this kind of analysis, you need to know exactly which payment methods your customers use for each type of transaction. BIN data can help identify most payment methods, but not all. In continuing one of the examples above, BIN data isn't enough to identify when a virtual card is backed by Apple Cash. For that, you need the issuer-level data returned through network tokenization. Once you know a customer is using Apple Cash to initiate a subscription, you can prompt them to choose a different card—helping prevent billing failures and reduce churn.

It’s Not Just About More Data—It’s About Better Outcomes

If you’re already using network tokenization or considering adopting them, know that issuer-level metadata is a powerful bonus. It equips you with the tools to reduce payment friction, support customers more effectively, and ultimately drive better business outcomes. In short: network tokenization doesn’t just secure your transactions—it helps you operate smarter by unlocking insights that can transform customer service and transaction processing.

Ready to start using network tokens? Pagos has you covered! With Toucan by Pagos, you can tokenize with all four major networks through a single integration. Contact us today!