Protection that never costs you an approval.
Most platforms make you choose: tighten security and lose good payments, or loosen it and carry the risk. Acquira refuses the trade. Card data is tokenized away from your systems, encryption wraps every leg of the payment, and 3-D Secure stays frictionless — so the same checkout that protects you is the one that approves more.
Security and conversion are not opposites
The idea that you protect a checkout by adding friction is a habit, not a rule. Real protection lives in the architecture: where card data sits, how it travels, who can reach it, and how an issuer is asked to authenticate a payment. Get those right and security becomes invisible — it stops being a tax on conversion and starts being the reason banks trust the transaction enough to say yes.
- Card data never touches your servers — it is captured in an isolated, PCI-scoped field and exchanged for a token before it reaches you.
- Network tokens replace the raw PAN — so even a stored credential is a scheme-issued token, useless if intercepted.
- Encryption in transit and at rest — every payload is encrypted end to end, and stored data is encrypted with keys you do not have to manage.
- Least-privilege access — sensitive systems are reachable only by the few roles that need them, every action logged.
Protection built into the path of the payment
Security is not a setting you switch on at the end. It is woven through every step a payment takes — from the moment a card is entered to the instant an issuer authorizes it. Here is where that protection lives.
PCI DSS Level 1
We operate at the highest level of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and are assessed against it every year. Sensitive card data is captured and held inside our certified environment, so the compliance burden stays with us — not on your servers or your team.
Network tokenization
Stored cards are replaced with scheme-issued network tokens, never the raw card number. A token is bound to your account and worthless anywhere else, so a stored credential carries far less risk — and updates itself when the underlying card is reissued.
Encryption everywhere
Every payload moves over strong TLS, and sensitive data is encrypted at rest with keys we rotate and manage for you. Card details are encrypted the instant they are entered, so the cleartext never travels across the network or lands in a log.
3-D Secure & SCA
Strong customer authentication is fully applied, yet stays frictionless: we hand the issuer rich data so most payments authenticate silently and a challenge appears only when the bank truly insists. Full compliance, with the interruption removed.
The work that keeps protection true day to day
Certificates prove a point in time; security is what happens the rest of the year. We watch the authorization stream for anomalies, keep access to sensitive systems narrow and fully audited, and invite outside researchers to test us. None of it slows a single payment down.
- Monitoring & anomaly detection — unusual patterns in the payment flow are flagged and reviewed continuously, around the clock.
- Audited, least-privilege access — only the roles that genuinely need cardholder data can reach it, and every access is recorded.
- Responsible disclosure — a clear channel for security researchers to report findings, so issues are fixed before they are exploited.
- Data residency in the EU / EEA — cardholder data is processed and stored within the region, with clear boundaries on where it lives.
Strong by default, silent by design
What security teams ask before signing off
Does card data ever touch our servers?
No. Card details are captured in an isolated, PCI-scoped field and encrypted before they leave the customer's browser, then exchanged for a token inside our certified environment. Your systems only ever see and store that token — the raw card number never reaches your servers, logs or database, which keeps your PCI scope to a minimum.
Are you PCI compliant?
Yes — at PCI DSS Level 1, the highest level defined by the standard, and we are assessed against it by an independent party every year. Because sensitive card data lives inside our environment rather than yours, most of the compliance burden moves to us, and integrating through our tokenized fields keeps your own assessment as light as the standard allows.
Does frictionless 3-D Secure make payments less secure?
No. Frictionless is still full strong customer authentication — the issuer authenticates the payment, just without a visible step for the customer. We send richer data so the bank can be confident silently. Every payment, silent or challenged, remains PSD2 and SCA compliant; we remove the interruption, not the security.
Where is cardholder data stored?
Cardholder data is processed and stored within the EU / EEA, encrypted at rest with keys we manage and rotate. We keep clear boundaries on where data lives so you can answer residency questions from your own customers and regulators with confidence, and we can walk your team through the specifics during a review.
Strong protection and a higher approval rate
Book a revenue review and we will walk your security and payments teams through how Acquira protects card data, stays PCI DSS Level 1, and keeps authentication frictionless — without leaving approvals on the table.