Establishing More Secure Money Movement with Tokenized Account Numbers (TANs)Learn how a top 5 bank partnered with MX to transition to TANs without disrupting users.
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Did you know that nearly every single data breach — 93% — contains financial information, such as bank records and account identification numbers? It is more critical than ever for financial institutions to find ways to minimize fraud risk from exposed account information. That’s why one of the largest financial institutions in the United States chose to implement Tokenized Account Numbers (TANs) during its money movement processes.
The bank recognized its legacy money movement processes leveraged full account numbers, creating an extremely high-risk profile should those account numbers become compromised. In addition, any remediation if fraud occurred was complex and time-consuming, forcing customers to undertake a massive homework list — reconfiguring direct deposits, automated bill payments, recurring debit transactions, and more.
By moving to TANs in place of full account numbers, the bank can significantly reduce fraud risk by removing and masking real account numbers. However, transitioning to TANs typically causes significant disruption to user experiences and requires an overwhelming amount of reauthentication in a short time period.
This Top 5 financial institution partnered with MX to manage a complex digital ecosystem, balancing data security and seamless user experiences to sustain its market-leading position. With TANs, the priority was to drive the best outcome for the user experience while transitioning to this more secure money movement process.
MX and the bank developed a phased adoption strategy that enabled users to seamlessly transition to TANs within their experience without creating large disruptions. With this phased approach, the financial institution was able to implement TANs in its environment without breaking any existing connections or forcing a disruptive, system-wide update. This phased adoption strategy included:
Extensive testing and validation with MX and the financial institution prior to market rollout ensured strong durability and no disruptions for users during the transition. Through this testing and validation process, the bank worked with MX to find a way to seamlessly move users to TANs as connections expire without disrupting a user’s ability to move money.
A dual-sending strategy to validate that TANs are functioning correctly during the transition. This dual-sending strategy involves sending both the secure TAN and the original account details (or a fallback) for processing. This ensures payments are successful during the transition to TANs by providing a fallback mechanism (the original data) while still reducing fraud risk by using tokens for most digital flows.
A controlled, phased rollout that avoids forcing all users to reconnect simultaneously. This not only creates a better user experience but ensures no widespread system disruptions. As customer tokens expire, they reconnect utilizing a TAN for the new connection, protecting them from fraud without a large disruption.
With this phased rollout, the financial institution successfully replaced the transmission of full account numbers with TANs across its platform for more than 14 million users.
By working closely with clients to understand their business objectives and operational realities, MX delivers solutions aligned to real, measurable outcomes. Through proactive collaboration and hands-on support, MX enables institutions to implement meaningful change while continuing to deliver secure, seamless experiences for users.