Global credit card issuer and provider Visa will enlist a group of multi-national and local payments systems providers to work on a project to make "the online payment experience easier and more secure for both customers and merchants". This is part of a worldwide push by Visa that kicked off this week.The technology will also improve sales conversion rates, Visa said, adding that once its system is up and running, customers will no longer need to update their payments details following a "card refresh" - the task that 45 per cent of Australians pooled in a recent YouGov survey considered to be the most annoying part of losing a card or having it expire.The system under development is known as credential on file tokenisation, an offshoot of Visa Token Service, which has been available to Visa Inc. issuing financial institutions globally, starting with US financial institutions from 2014. The latest announcement is another iteration of the "phased roll-out overseas" of Visa Token Service, which was scheduled for beginning in 2015. The technology has been designed to support payments with mobile devices using all major mobile platforms. It works on the principle that card details can be replaced by unique digital identifiers, or 'tokens', which are used for payment without the need to input or store a cardholder's sensitive information. Each token is merchant-specific, so can only be used with the merchant where it is stored, removing - or at least reducing - the incentive for hackers to try to steal the account data.Implementing the technology requires payments gateways and facilitators to be onside - in this case for its Australia operations, Visa has tapped a mix of multinational and local payments gateway providers: CyberSource, Adyen, Rambus, G+D Mobile Security, SecureCo, Ezidebit, eWAY and Bambora. (In the US, most these same players are involved, along with, AsiaPay, Braintree, Checkout.com, Cherri Tech, Elavon, Ezidebit, Fit-Pay, PayPal, Payscout, SafeCharge, Square, Stripe, Worldpay and YellowPepper. All these gateway providers are or will soon be able to facilitate credential on file digital payments on behalf of their merchant and payment clients, Visa Inc said.)Visa asserted that the new system will also strengthen e-commerce security because card details, such as account numbers and expiry dates, are not stored each time a consumer makes a purchase. Businesses usually store card details for direct debit, top-up, loyalty, subscription or account-based online shopping."This removes sensitive information from merchant systems thereby decreasing the risk of data breach attempts," Visa said via a media statement.In addition to boosting digital security, COF tokenisation also enables merchants to have consumer payment details instantly updated when a card is lost, stolen or expires, meaning there is no need for the customer to log in and update their details, or the business to lose out on that payment cycle.In a statement earlier this week Visa said work will begin immediately, in a move expected to make Australia one of fastest adopters globally.