Newly-Available Litle Vault Provides Integrated Payment Tokenization Platform to Protect Customer Data, Reduce Scope of PCI Compliance

Integrated token solution in-use by major internet retailers

LOWELL, Mass., September 21, 2010—Litle & Co., a leading payment processor and consultative merchant services provider for direct-to-consumer commerce, today announced the availability of Litle Vault, one of the first integrated tokenization solutions that enables card-not-present (CNP) merchants to safely remove sensitive cardholder data from their systems without disrupting the integrity of their existing credit card transaction-based processes.

The integration of processing and tokenization on the same platform creates a level of continuity – everything is completely seamless and transparent to the customer and the merchant. With Litle Vault, merchants receive a “one-stop shopping” experience – using the Litle Vault to manage the payment processing as well as tokenization requirements. Delivered through the Litle payment processing platform, merchants can then use tokens in place of credit card numbers for all successive payment transactions including authorizations, deposits and chargebacks.

The introduction of the Litle Vault complements and extends Litle & Co.‘s ongoing commitment to engineer the most relevant, feature-rich payments platform for merchants who sell directly to consumers.

Helping merchants stay focused on protecting customer data and implementing the appropriate data-loss-prevention technologies, the Litle Vault:

Reduces scope of PCI Compliance – Whenever sensitive cardholder data is replaced with a token and used in association with operational areas such as acceptance of online payments, cardholder data storage and chargeback processing, it should significantly reduce the scope of PCI audits and associated costs.
Minimizes the risk from potential data breaches – Data breaches do and will happen. However, in a Litle & Co. tokenized environment, hackers cannot steal what merchants don’t have - in this case, a customer’s credit card numbers. Even in the event of a network breach, cyber thieves will quickly realize they can’t access sensitive card data, and as a result, they will be less motivated to “hack” back into a system.
Centralizes credit card security, reduces data exposure – Once registered, a single token can be used by anyone in an organization, mitigating the time-consuming and often costly process of having to encrypt, decrypt and re-encrypt each time someone touches a customer’s credit card.
Eliminates insurance costs – Tokenization is a preventive measure that minimizes the cost of a data breach risk. But it also potentially enables a merchant to eliminate a particularly onerous insurance premium that can often run hundreds of thousands of dollars. With tokenization, a component of the Errors and Omissions (E&O) Liability Insurance premium cost, typically $0.60 per card annually, can be eliminated.

Supporting Quotes
“In an age where everyone wants to ensure the security of their data, Litle’s tokenization technology allows CSN to continue the protection it provides to its customers, while making it even easier for repeat customers to shop with us,” said Nicholas Malone, Chief Financial Officer, CSN Stores (http://www.csnstores.com; Twitter @CSNStores). “The Litle Vault provides our partners, customers and vendors with additional comfort that CSN is fully committed to and focused entirely on protecting our customers’ information.”

“Having previously incorporated Litle & Co.’s XML spec into our proprietary order management system, the implementation of the Litle Vault was easy and invisible to our high-touch customer service organization,” said Kyle Straveler, Systems Analyst, 4imprint, Inc. (http://www.4imprint.com; Twitter @4imprint).  “The card format-preserving nature of the Litle tokenization process is very intuitive within our OMS, and as customers have become more comfortable using cards online, Litle Vault allows us to spend more time on proprietary development work with this added layer of security built right in to our processing platform.”

“Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards for data security are still evolving as they relate to Data Loss Protection (DLP) technologies, but that doesn’t mean merchants should be slow to implement forward-looking solutions to protect consumer data,” said Jason Pavona, Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Litle & Co. “We believe tokenization is the next step in enabling merchants to safely remove sensitive cardholder data from their systems.  Litle & Co. is excited to offer merchants a platform-integrated solution, the Litle Vault, designed to address continuing vulnerabilities in the payment chain of credit and debit card transactions, ahead of other vendors.”

“Tokenization of payment card data has quickly become a must-have for e-commerce and direct-response merchants whose web presence exposes them to a great deal of breach risk and who are seeking to reduce their PCI scope,” said David Fish, Senior Analyst at Mercator Advisory Group, the leading research and consulting firm focused on the payments industry.  “Litle & Co. has earned the reputation of a trusted partner in the card-not-present space, where their expertise in dealing with transaction data security in card processing environments has coalesced in this latest offering, Litle Vault.”

Supporting Resources

# Read about the new features and value to merchants: Litle Vault
# Learn more about Litle &Co.
# Follow us on Twitter: @LitleCo
# Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/companies/litle-&-co.

Media Contacts
John Stevens, Litle & Co., 978 275 6620, ‎.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), @JohnBStevens (Twitter)