Tokenization for recurring payments

You can securely store payment details for your shoppers and offer the following:

• Subscription payments.
• Automatic top-ups to shopper accounts.
• A faster checkout experience for your shoppers.

With the shopper's consent, we store their payment details using a secure process called tokenization. We create an encrypted token that contains the shopper's payment details. When the shopper chooses to pay with their stored payment details, you use the token to submit the payment.

Benefits of tokenization

When you implement tokenization in your integration, you can do the following.

• Let shoppers store their payment details for a faster checkout experience later.
• Offer shoppers their stored payment details for later payments.
• Store payment details for a subscription or a non-fixed schedule contract.
• Submit later payments for subscriptions or for automatic top-ups to shopper accounts.
• Limit your PCI DSS scope.

To store your shopper's payment details, you only need to pass some additional parameters when making a payment. In the first payment, we collect the payment information from the shopper and generate a token for it. The token is then sent to your server for future use. For later payments, you need to make a request with the shopper reference and the token.

Supported payment methods

We support tokenization for many card and local payment methods, including major card brands, ACH Direct Debit, and SEPA Direct Debit.

Our payment methods overview shows if each payment method supports recurring payments using tokenization.

Recurring payment types

You can create and make payments with tokens for the following recurring payment types:

• One-off payments: one-off transactions where a shopper can either store their payment details or pay in your website or app at a later time using their stored details.
• Subscriptions: a recurring transaction made at regular intervals for a product or a service.
• Automatic top-ups and other non-fixed schedule contracts: contracts that occur on a non-fixed schedule using stored card details. This includes automatic top-ups when the cardholder's balance drops below a certain amount.

The recurring payment types available for your integration depend on your server-side flow. If you are using the Sessions flow, making token payments for transactions where the shopper is not present, such as subscription payments, requires to use the /payments endpoint.

Recurring payment type	Sessions flow		Advanced flow
	Create a token	Make a payment	Create a token	Make a payment
One-off payments
Subscriptions
Automatic top-ups and other non-fixed schedule contracts

Shopper reference management

When you store a shopper's payment details, you must store the token with a unique shopper reference. This shopper reference must be unique to each shopper, because we use it to associate the token with the shopper.

By default, shopper references and tokens can only be used with one merchant account. If your company account has multiple merchant accounts, you can enable the Token Groups feature which shares shopper references and their associated tokens between your merchant accounts. Contact Support Team and ask to enable the feature.

PCI compliance

If you are not fully PCI DSS compliant, we recommend that you use Adyen tokens to make payments and limit your PCI scope.

Stored payment details from other payment service providers

If you have existing recurring contracts with another payment service provider, you can migrate and import stored payment details to Adyen. When you import the data, you do not need to collect your shoppers' payment details again to create a token.

When the stored payment details are successfully migrated, you receive an output file. From this file you can get the parameters that you need to use the tokens in future payments.

Set up tokenization