What are Network Tokens?
Network tokens are digital payment credentials that can replace Primary Account Numbers (PANs) for online transactions. Finix integrates with Visa, Mastercard, and Discover to convert a user's stored PANs into network tokens. These tokens are managed by Finix to ensure they remain up-to-date, even if the original card details change. For instance, if a customer loses their card or if it expires, Finix receives a notification from the network and automatically updates the token. This allows the token to remain functional without requiring the customer to manually update their payment information.
Why use Network Tokens?
- Increased Authorization Rates: Network tokens can increase authorization rates, leading to more approved payments and higher revenue for your business.
- Lower Interchange Fees: Visa often charges lower interchange fees on transactions utilizing network tokens.
- Improved Customer Experience: By automatically updating payment details, network tokens remove the need for customers to manually refresh their card details, ensuring a seamless, hassle-free experience for both customers and merchants. Rather than waiting for the cardholder to activate a new card, you can continue accepting the card on file without interruption — thanks to network tokens.
There are two ways to enable Network Tokens:
- Enabling Network Tokens for All New Payment Instruments : You can choose to enable Network Tokens for all new cards.
- Enabling Network Tokens for an Individual Payment Instrument : You can enable Network Tokens at an individual Payment Instrument level. This can be particularly useful if you just want a subset of your payment instruments to be enabled for Network Tokens.
Option 1: Enabling Network Tokens for All New Payment Instruments
To enable new Payment Instruments of type PAYMENT_CARD for Network Tokens, contact your Finix Representative or email support@finix.com. This is a setting that will make it so all new Card Payment Instruments are enabled for Network Tokens
If you would like to include all previously created cards for Network Tokens, please let us know in your request.
You can see if you are enabled for Network Tokens by:
- Navigating to the Company Page on the Dashboard
- Clicking on Payment Instrument Settings
Option 2: Enabling Network Tokens for an Individual Payment Instrument
Finix Dashboard
To enable a Payment Instrument of type PAYMENT_CARD for Network Tokens:
- Navigate to a Payment Instrument detail page
- Find the Settings section
- Click on the Edit Button and enable
Using the Finix API to Enable an Individual Card
You'll pass network_token_enabled is true to enable a specific card. If you already created the card, you can instead run a PUT request to enable the card. Immediately upon enabling a specific card for network tokens, we'll return PENDING for network_token_state while we wait for the Issuing bank to generate a token and return it to us. This should take a couple of seconds depending on how fast the Issuing bank returns the network token.
If network_token_enabled is true and network_token_state is ACTIVE, we will not use the underlying PAN, and instead use the network token. Alternatively, if network_token_state is still in the PENDING state, we'll submit the transaction with the underlying PAN until network_token_state is ACTIVE. You can see below for all of the available enumerators.
Once the card has a network_token_state of ACTIVE, you can use the Payment Instrument ID to create transactions.
curl -X POST \
-u USsRhsHYZGBPnQw8CByJyEQW:8a14c2f9-d94b-4c72-8f5c-a62908e5b30e \
https://finix.sandbox-payments-api.com/payment_instruments \
-H 'Accept: application/hal+json' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'Finix-Version: 2022-02-01' \
-d '{
"network_token_enabled": true,
"token": "TKiMxe323RE5Dq3wLVtG8kSW",
"type": "TOKEN",
"identity": "IDpYDM7J9n57q849o9E9yNrG"
}'Network Token State
If you enable network tokens, network_token_state can return the following values.
| Enumerator | Description |
|---|---|
| ACTIVE | The card and token are in good standing. |
| CLOSED | The cardholder has closed their account. |
| FAILED | The network token request failed to provision a token successfully either because the card is not eligible or of a system error. |
| NOT_ENABLED | This is the initial state while networktokenenabled is false. |
| PENDING | The card is enabled for network tokens and is in the process of requesting a network token from the card brands. |
| SUSPENDED | The Issuing bank has temporarily suspended the use card of the card and cannot be used for transactions. The merchant can proactively contact the cardholder to use a different card or have them contact their Issuing bank to reactive their card. |
How are Network Tokens Different from Account Updater?
Account updater will ensure that you always have the up-to-date PAN while with network tokens you will not have access to the current PAN because it uses an underlying network token to process your transactions. The purpose of each is to increase authorization rates while improving the customer experience.