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InComm Payments announced Tuesday that its Visa-branded Vanilla Gift Cards can now be downloaded to Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay mobile wallets, enabling the card to be used for contactless payments. It is the first open-loop Visa gift card to be supported on mobile wallets, InComm says. In November, Atlanta-based InComm Payments supported the launch of MastercardGiftCard.com, which exclusively sells Mastercard open-loop gift cards that can be added to a mobile wallet.
To ensure the security of transactions made with its Vanilla Visa Gift Card, InComm will enable tokenization, which masks the card’s account number by replacing it with a unique string of unrelated numbers during authorization of the transaction. InComm did a soft launch of its tokenization services in September and fully rolled the service out a few weeks ago.
“Touch-free payment adoption rates were already increasing organically, but the pandemic accelerated the consumer demand for quicker, safer payments,” said Matt Sollie, senior vice president of product management, financial services, at InComm Payments, in a prepared statement. “By adding the ability to add your Vanilla Visa Gift Cards to a mobile wallet, we’re increasing recipients’ safety by facilitating touch-free redemptions and increasing their utility.”
In addition to being able to add their Vanilla Visa Gift Card to a mobile wallet, consumers can customize their physical or digital Vanilla gift cards at VanillaGift.com by uploading a photo or logo to the card and choose from a broader selection of colors. Consumers can also purchase one of six gift boxes for physical cards and can send cards to family and friends by mail or e-mail.
Vanilla Visa Gift Cards are issued by Sutton Bank and will marketed and sold on VanillaGift.com.
