American Express Token Service vs Basis Theory

American Express Token Service replaces a card’s primary account number with a payment token for online and mobile commerce. It includes a token vault, token issuance and provisioning, lifecycle management, and risk management. Tokens are surrogate values that can be restricted by retailer, number of uses, lifetime, and other variables, and follow EMVCo Payment Tokenization specifications. During provisioning, issuers can assess whether a card is active, suspected of fraud, eligible for tokenization, and belongs to the card member requesting the token. Lifecycle management can keep tokens current when cards are replaced, reducing manual updates to stored payment details. Listed uses include card-on-file payments, Click to Pay, digital wallets, virtual cards, browser autofill virtual card numbers, and digital or numberless cards. The service is cloud-based and supports payment cards, card-on-file credentials, digital wallets, wearables, Click to Pay, and QR code payments. Pricing is on request; the listed plan is free, with no deployment or use fees stated. Availability varies by market and enablement is required.

Basis Theory is a cloud payment-data platform that centralizes sensitive information, governs access, and routes tokens to payment services. It tokenizes card data at collection so raw primary account numbers do not touch customers’ systems. Its tools include Proxy, Reactors, Elements, and Token Intents for routing, server-side logic, collecting sensitive data, and validating information before tokenization. Vault capabilities include Account Updater, BIN Details, Network Tokens, and 3DS. The maker says its API connects with existing payment service providers, listing Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay, Chase, Braintree, Nuvei, Amazon Pay, and ACI as examples. Documented SDKs cover.NET, Java, Go, NodeJS, Python, Terraform, React, JavaScript, iOS, Android, and React Native. Basis Theory states that it is PCI Level 1 compliant, SOC 2 Type II certified, ISO 27001 certified, and HIPAA compliant. It says data is encrypted at rest and in transit with tenant-specific keys, and communications use TLS 1.2+. The Standard platform costs $995 a month, includes 20,000 tokens, and charges $0.05 per additional token. Tokens added and deleted within a calendar month still count toward that month’s token total.