# Tokenization

*Banking & Payments — Finicade finance glossary*

Tokenisation replaces a card number with a substitute value that's useless outside its specific context. It's why a phone wallet payment doesn't expose your real card number to the merchant, and why a breach of a tokenised merchant database yields nothing reusable. It also lets a card be updated behind the scenes when reissued, so subscriptions don't break.

**Also known as:** payment tokenization, network token, card tokenisation

**Related terms:** [Digital Wallet](https://finicade.com/glossary/digital-wallet), [Card-Not-Present Fraud](https://finicade.com/glossary/card-not-present-fraud), [Payment Processor](https://finicade.com/glossary/payment-processor), [Card Network](https://finicade.com/glossary/card-network), [Chargeback](https://finicade.com/glossary/chargeback)

Source: https://finicade.com/glossary/tokenization