According to PYMNTS.com, payment processor EBANX announced on December 11 that it is expanding its network token offering into Colombia, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. The technology replaces a card’s primary account number with a dynamic token, and in tests across Latin America, EBANX saw credit card declines from fraud and security issues drop by up to 86%. The company now processes over two million tokenized transactions monthly in Colombia alone, where the average payment approval rate is 10 percentage points higher with tokens and 87% of merchants use the solution. In Peru, EBANX is the sole provider using the tech across Visa and Mastercard, with 70% of its card transactions there already tokenized. This expansion follows a PYMNTS Intelligence report finding that 78% of merchants now enable network or payment tokens.
Stakeholder Impact
So, who wins here? Basically, everyone in the payment chain gets a boost. For consumers, it’s about fewer frustrating declines at checkout. Nothing kills an online shopping vibe faster than a card being rejected for “suspected fraud” when you’re just trying to buy a new game or some clothes. EBANX’s data suggests that problem is getting a lot smaller.
For merchants, especially the larger ones, the benefit is crystal clear: more completed sales and less lost revenue. Here’s the thing: the PYMNTS report shows a huge familiarity gap. While 80% of big merchants ($10M-$50M revenue) are very familiar with tokenization, only 14% of the smallest merchants (under $1M) are. That’s a massive divide. The smaller guys are potentially leaving money on the table and exposing themselves to more risk because they’re not up to speed on this now-standard tech.
Market Context And Future
This isn’t just a Latin American story, though. EBANX’s expansion is a sign of tokenization going truly global and becoming table stakes for any serious payment processor. The report notes that 97% of payment service providers already use network tokens for digital wallet payments. Think about that—it’s practically universal. The driver? Sheer necessity. Roughly two-thirds of merchants have experienced payments fraud, and over three-quarters have seen online transactions fail. When problems are that widespread, the solution gets adopted fast.
And the potential scale is mind-boggling. McKinsey estimates the total tokenized market cap could hit $2 trillion by 2030. That’s not just payment cards; that’s tokenizing assets, identities, you name it. But for the payments world right now, it’s a straightforward security and efficiency upgrade. It’s one of those rare technologies where better security also directly translates to a smoother customer experience and higher revenue for businesses. Not a bad combo.
