Silverflow, the cloud-native payment processing company, has today launched a new whitepaper exploring the power of network tokenization and how this technology can allow for up to 3-6% increased authorization rates and decrease unnecessary churn.

Launched at MPE Berlin 2025, Europe's largest merchant payments conference, the whitepaper – ‘Exploring the power of network tokenization for the modern payments stack’ – explores how merchants can upgrade from Card-on-File to Token-on-File and defines the difference between digital wallet tokens and Token-on-File tokens, before giving actionable insights on optimizing a best-in-class recurring payments set-up.

Speaking on the launch of the whitepaper, Erik Jongbloed, Product Manager at Silverflow, said: “Network tokens are one of the most important parts of the modern payments system, and if your company is serious about making payments safer and less expensive, then they are a vital part of your payments stack. If a merchant truly wants to create a best-in-class set-up, the combination and understanding of underlying transaction data, as well as your capabilities to act on these will be the icing on the cake to enable convenient, secure, and cost-effective transaction sequences.”

Today, the payments ecosystem is moving away from cards and toward tokens. Recognizing the power of this technology, Mastercard set a goal to ensure 100% of online transactions are tokenized and authenticated in Europe in 2030, and Visa has reported that around 30% of transactions processed over its systems are tokenized, with the potential for this number to grow to 70% towards the end of the decade.

Apple Pay, Google Pay and Click To Pay are all examples of payment apps that use network tokens to offer cardholders a fast, frictionless check-out experience. Additionally, merchants and platforms are looking to shift from storing ‘Card-on-File’ to ‘Token-on-File’. For cardholders, this means more convenience, better security, and a frictionless check-out experience.

Merchants stand to benefit too. Tokenization offers better security by encrypting sensitive cardholder data and higher revenue by reducing the impact of card lifecycle updates, enabling higher approval rates. Finally, acquirers and issuers see higher transaction authorization rates and lower fraud, increasing the overall level of performance and trust in the ecosystem.

Initially, tokenization systems were proprietary and limited in scope, with merchants having to rely on specific payment processors, creating “walled gardens” of tokens that lacked interoperability. This often led to inefficiencies and restricted merchants’ ability to optimize their payment systems.  Today, however, network tokens—issued directly by payment networks—have revolutionized the process. Unlike traditional tokens, network tokens are interoperable across platforms, gateways, and merchants.

Anne Willem de Vries, Co-founder and CEO of Silverflow, commented: “As digital payments evolve, tokenization will continue to play a pivotal role as emerging technologies integrate with tokenization to create even more secure and convenient payment methods. The message for merchants and payment providers is clear: investing in tokenization is essential to meet growing consumer expectations for secure, seamless transactions.”

He added: “By adopting network tokenization and related innovations, businesses can future-proof their payment systems and build trust with their customers. This is because, in a rapidly digitizing world, tokenization isn’t just a security feature; it’s a major part of a new standard in payments.”

The whitepaper was launched at MPE 2025. Taking place March 18-20th at the InterContinental Hotel in Berlin, MPE is the leading conference in Europe’s merchant payments ecosystem, bringing together over 1,500 of the brightest minds, groundbreaking innovations, and industry leaders to shape the future of payments. Silverflow is exhibiting in the private lounge PL1 at the conference hotel.