Token based credit card systems vs. traditional gateway

Question

I'm trying to decide between Paypal PayFlow for a transaction processing service or a service like BrainTree.

BrainTree's service intrigues me because they will actually return a token to you for a credit card which can be used in future transactions. This token acts like a GUID for the credit card, but is useless if stolen. BrainTree is the only service I have come across that uses such a system - but I'm not sure if they are unique or not.

I heard some praise for BrainTree on a recent podcast, and had not heard of them before.

I wondered if anyone has any general advice on picking between the two - from the perspective of how much programming I will need to do or PCI concerns.

Answer 1

PayFlowPro will allow you to do this as well. Checkout the DoReferenceTransaction method of their docs. Here is a forum post with some additional info.

Answer 2

Authorize.NET also supports this through their Customer Information Manager (CIM) API. Speficially look at Page 28 of the CIM XML guide (PDF). The <extraOptions> tag contains the transaction key:

<extraOptions><![CDATA[x_customer_ip=100.0.0.1&x_authentication_ 
indicator=5&x_cardholder_authentication_value=uq3wDbqt8A26rfANAA 
AAAP]]></extraOptions>