LAS VEGAS, NV--(Marketwired - Jan 24, 2014) - Shift4 Corporation is proud to announce the successful processing of the 5 billionth tokenized transaction through their independent payment gateway, DOLLARS ON THE NET®.

"Scholars say it takes 10,000 repetitions to become a master of something," said Shift4 CTO J.D. Oder, the man who introduced tokenization to the payments industry in 2005. "After 5 billion successful iterations, we're not sure what to call ourselves -- but our tech staff is leaning towards 'Jedi.'"

Humor aside, the Jedi analogy fits. Since introducing the technology, Shift4 has spent most of the last decade fighting against those who would bastardize TrueTokenization® to accomplish their own dark purposes.

"Many organizations have introduced weaker, encryption-based payment security solutions and slapped the label 'tokenization' on them to try and capitalize on the success we've seen with our TrueTokenization," Oder said. "We call these tokenization-in-name-only, or TINO solutions, and we do our best to keep merchants from falling victim to them."

Fortunately, it appears the Payments Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) is finally taking steps to remedy the issues caused by TINO solutions. In their proposed new Tokenization Standard -- slated to take effect in the fall -- the PCI Council twice declares that tokens with a one-to-one relationship with the original PAN may present risks to merchants. Therefore, merchants using these weak solutions will no longer qualify for PCI scope reductions.

"It only took us 5 billion successful examples to prove to PCI that what we introduced nearly a decade ago was the best way to do tokenization. And it may turn out to be the only tokenization method secure enough to merit a PCI scope reduction for merchants who use it," Oder said.

About Shift4 Corporation
 Shift4 Corporation makes it simple for merchants across all industries to securely process credit, debit, and gift card transactions. With connections to nearly every bank and processor in North America and integrations to hundreds of PMS/POS systems, Shift4's DOLLARS ON THE NET® is the world's largest independent payment gateway. Shift4 provides pre- and post-settlement auditing capabilities, fraud prevention tools, support for emerging technologies like EMV and mobile payments, and security solutions such as TrueTokenization® and P2PE, which drastically simplify PCI compliance -- all for just pennies per transaction. Shift4 is a proud merchant advocate, maintaining complete bank and processor neutrality to ensure that their customers have the freedom to switch banks and processors as needed. For more information, visit www.shift4.com.