What is the card-on-file (COF)

Card-on-file (COF) transactions let merchants store a customer’s credit or debit card information for future use. This process makes the checkout process faster and more convenient for repeat customers for the following types of payments:

• Recurring payments—Subscriptions or memberships where regular billing occurs.
• Installments—Multiple payment transactions for goods or services.

Key features

Key features of card-on-file are:

• Convenience— Faster checkout process since you don’t need to use your card details repeatedly.
• Consent—Customer consent is required before saving card-on-file in the customer’s profile.
• Security—Stored card details are typically encrypted and tokenized to protect against fraud.
• One Click Purchases—Enables quick purchases with stored card details.

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Note

You can use sandbox test cards to build and test the COF feature. A COF payment requires that the Clover merchants have multi-pay tokens enabled in their gateway settings.

Card-on-file in Clover Ecommerce network

Related topic

Blog: Ecommerce Tokenization: Understanding Methods that Keep Card Data Safe