Payment Pipes Get Rebuilt

Vaulted tokenization centralizes PAN-to-token mappings and cryptographic keys, creating a single high‑value target; if cryptography is flawed, keys are compromised, or the vault/database is breached, attackers can recover PANs or forge tokens—nullifying protections and enabling large‑scale compromise with regulatory consequences despite mitigations sujitt.medium.com, stripe.com, aciworldwide.com.

Meeting PCI and federal expectations typically entails FIPS‑validated cryptographic modules, strict key management, segmentation, minimal token lifetimes, continuous monitoring, and independent security assessments—an ongoing operational load inherent to the model rather than optional hardening aciworldwide.com, stripe.com.

There is continuing debate about centralized vault risk compared with distributed or format‑preserving approaches, signaling unresolved architectural direction and persistent controversy around the core design choice for tokenization systems aciworldwide.com, sujitt.medium.com, stripe.com.