Plaid Taps VGS for Tokenization Services

Data privacy provider Very Good Security (VGS) has launched an expanded partnership with data network Plaid to provide tokenization services, the company said in a Monday (May 16) news release.

“Tokenization can help protect personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive data from being exposed and used for nefarious purposes,” VGS said in the release. “VGS will provide tokenization of PII and financial data vaulting services for Plaid customers. This will help ensure end-to-end data security for Plaid customers by seamlessly integrating VGS services alongside Plaid APIs.”

See also: ‘Zero Data’ Lets Firms Control — and Find Value — In Sensitive Data

VGS also said its Tokenization and Zero Data Platform lets companies glean value from sensitive data with format preservation and full portability, letting customers avoid vendor lock-in and reclaim time spent on data security hygiene and compliance maintenance.

“Building and operating financial apps involves interacting with PII and sensitive account data,” said Hoang Leung, head of payments products and solutions at VGS. “Technology companies building these apps get more value from data when tokenization is employed, which creates protection for the end-user and efficient, secure operations for the company.”

Leung added that the partnership will let Plaid’s customers add new data security without disrupting their ecosystems, giving them the chance to get more value from their data.

Last month, Plaid teamed up with data privacy platform Skyflow to help developers build applications with data privacy infrastructure using its application programming interface (API). Skyflow’s Data Privacy Vault offering helps its clients build FinTech applications with data privacy, security and compliance tools.

Read more: Skyflow, Plaid Partner on Data Protection and Privacy for FinTechs

With the partnership, Skyflow offers pre-built connections to Plaid’s products and a predefined vault path for Plaid clients, giving developers and users assurances that the data accessed via Plaid will be stored securely.

PYMNTS spoke last year with Mahmoud Abdelkader, VGS’ CEO and co-founder, about the value of a concept known as “zero data.”

In terms of mechanics, zero data lets companies map proprietary payment service provider (PSP) tokens and the underlying primary account number to a global alias, bringing transactions together transactions for a given card or customer regardless of location, channel or PSP. Zero data lets firms pull back the layers of customer activity — Abdelkader compared it to an onion — and forge stronger customer relationships.