Updating a token

Tokens enable you to use your customer's payment card details for future transactions without requiring your customer to re-enter their complete payment card details every time that they make a purchase on your website.

There are several reasons why you may want to update a token with Amazon Payment Services. For example, your customer's payment card details may change over time.

Why update an existing token?

Updating a token can help you to reflect several scenarios:

Updated card details. Where your customer's payment card details have changed you can send a request to Amazon Payment Services to update the data associated with a token, without creating a new token.
Set tokens as inactive. If your customer removes a payment card from their profile you can request that the token stored with Amazon Payment Services is deactivated so that you are not charged for unused tokens.
Unique use cases. Finally, merchants can manipulate tokens for a range of unique use cases. For example, the update token command allows merchants to change the token name if they need to do so.

The update process

When your customer first completes a successful transaction, you would ordinarily create a token during the transaction workflow. This token is associated with the payment card details that your customer used at the time of the first transaction.

You can allow your customer to update their payment card details by updating the payment card data associated with the token.

In practice, the process works like this:

On your website you offer your customer a specific page where they can update their payment card details. This page will host a form that connects to Amazon Payment Services.
Your customer completes their new payment card details on this page.
Your server contacts Amazon Payment Services and directly submits the updated credit card details to Amazon Payment Services.
Amazon Payment Services confirms receipt.
Future transactions are processed using the updated payment card details.

All you need to do to allow your customer to update their payment card details is to code a form on your website where your customers can request an update.

Once your customer confirms the update you submit the new payment card details alongside the unique token name to Amazon Payment Services.

Note that Amazon Payment Services does not verify the validity of your customer's payment card details when your customer updates their details during the token update process. We will only verify the validity of the new payment card details once you attempt to charge the customer's payment card.

You are also at option to code token update actions to reflect other scenarios. For example, you can use the update command to deactivate a token if your customer removes a card or closed their account.

We cover the complete process, including the relevant parameters, in our API reference.

Need further help?

If you get stuck feel free to get in touch with the Amazon Payment Services team. Just message our support team at merchantsupport-ps@amazon.com.