Akoya secures US patents for tokenization and consumer data control

Akoya has secured three US patents for tokenization and consumer data control, meant to help the company in its mission for consumer data privacy and control.

Akoya’s mission is to eliminate the risks associated with screen scraping and give people a safe, secure, and transparent way to provide access to their financial data. The patent awards encompass the systems and methods for managing tokens and filtering data for permissioned data access. They describe the process by which a token enables access to a user's data at a financial institution without an intermediary entity receiving user credentials. The patents also include the system for which data received may be filtered to identify specifically which data the recipient is permitted to access.

According to Akoya staff, ‘these innovations make it easy for all sizes of data providers to participate in Open Finance without ( heavy lifting on their part, all the while applying data minimisation principles on top of end-user permissioned data without the need to store any data by the intermediary’.

Akoya is focused on harnessing the power of tokens to keep consumer information secure. Akoya recently announced itself as the first third-party service provider to access Secure Token Exchange from The Clearing House to tokenize account numbers on behalf of financial institutions that participate in the STE token service and are connected to Akoya’s network. Fintechs and other data recipients can retrieve tokenized account numbers directly through Akoya. 

Akoya became a tokenized payments provider

Financial institutions will be able to tokenize customer account information and share those tokens with fintechs and data aggregators through Akoya. Instead of account and routing numbers, these tokens can be used for initiating and requesting payments and linking payment accounts.

Akoya’s CEO stated that ‘currently, moving money in the United States requires sensitive account information to be widely shared between multiple parties, which increases the risk of fraud if and when the data is exposed. In addition, a breach at one entity holding that data requires a consumer closing and opening a new account at their bank – a complicated, cost-heavy, and cumbersome process. Tokenization can mitigate risks and reduce costs in case of a breach since only the token issued to the impacted financial institution needs to be changed – not the underlying account.’

TCH’s STE issues a unique token – a random string of characters to financial institutions that participate in the service and sponsored token requestors. Each token stands in for the actual account number of a deposit account and may be used by a third party (e.g., a fintech app). Any scenario that requires the storage of account information would see a significant decrease in risk and liability by leveraging tokenized account numbers.