Supercharge PCI Compliance With CyberSource + Chargent

If your team processes payments through Salesforce, minimizing Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance scope should be a top priority, but many businesses unknowingly expose themselves to unnecessary risk. By combining CyberSource’s powerful tokenization with Chargent’s native Salesforce automation, you can offload sensitive card data, streamline recurring payments, and build a secure, scalable payment workflow that remains audit-ready. This article explores how tokenization works, why it’s important for compliance and security, and how to implement it effectively within Salesforce to protect customer data and simplify operations.

Understanding Tokenization (and Why It Matters)

At its core, tokenization is about trust and containment. When your customers submit their payment details, they’re entrusting you with one of their most sensitive data types. Tokenization is the technique that lets you preserve that trust without taking on unnecessary risk.

In addition to reducing your risk, you’re saving your business time and expense.  Without a solution like Chargent and CyberSource, achieving PCI compliance can be a complex and costly endeavor – often requiring months of effort, significant changes to infrastructure, and ongoing audits. For many businesses, the process can cost anywhere from $15,000 to over $200,000 annually, depending on the level of compliance required.  

How It Works (Tokenization Defined)

Tokenization replaces real card data (like a 16-digit credit card number) with a randomized, non-sensitive placeholder or token. For example, the card number 4111-1111-1111-1111 might become something like TKN-8e97f23a3f.

• The token is stored in Salesforce
• The card data lives securely in the CyberSource vault
• The token is mapped back to the card only within CyberSource, never inside Salesforce

This approach ensures that even in the unlikely event someone gains unauthorized access to your Salesforce environment, they would never obtain real card data.

 

Encryption vs. Tokenization: What’s the Difference?

Many confuse encryption and tokenization, but their implications for PCI compliance are drastically different.

Tokenization essentially shields Salesforce, and your organization, from risk by ensuring that cardholder data never enters the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the first place.  It’s a safer and simpler way to protect yourself and your customers.

CyberSource’s Role in Tokenization

CyberSource, a Visa solution, serves as the centralized and certified vault for handling card data securely. It’s fully compliant with PCI DSS Level 1, the highest security standard in the industry.

How CyberSource Manages Tokens

Here’s how the lifecycle works:

1. Token Creation: When a customer submits their payment info through a Chargent-powered form, the data is sent directly to CyberSource’s Application Programming Interface (API).
2. Vaulting: CyberSource immediately stores this information in a secure token vault.
3. Token Return: A unique token is sent back to Salesforce, where Chargent stores it.
4. Token Use: That token is reused to process future, one-time, or recurring transactions, without reentering the card details.

Advantages of Using CyberSource Tokens

• PCI Scope Reduction: Systems like Salesforce are no longer considered “systems that store, process, or transmit cardholder data.”
• Recurring Payments Made Easy: Store a single token and charge customers over time with no reauthentication.
• Reduced Fraud Risk: Even if a token is compromised, it’s useless outside your environment or merchant account.
• Global Support: CyberSource supports multiple regions, card brands, and payment types, making it ideal for mid- to enterprise-sized businesses scaling internationally.

How Chargent Integrates CyberSource Tokenization in Salesforce

Chargent is built to work natively within Salesforce, making it uniquely suited to extend tokenization benefits without adding technical debt or requiring complex integrations. Check out our video detailing how the integration works.

Zero-Touch Card Handling

Using Customer Initiated Transactions (CITs) with Chargent’s integration, your users never handle or see real card data:

• Payment forms are rendered via Secure Hosted Fields or a Chargent Payment Console.
• Card details are submitted directly to CyberSource through an API, bypassing Salesforce entirely.
• The only data stored in Salesforce is the token, expiration date, and other non-sensitive metadata.

Salesforce Native Mapping

• Tokens are stored as custom fields within Salesforce in the Chargent Payment Methods object. They can be leveraged from anywhere in your Salesforce org – any page or object. This means your staff can collect one-time or recurring (subscription) payments from Opportunities, Accounts, Contacts – you name it! Admins can build flows, triggers, and reports around tokens just like any other Salesforce field.

Real-World Workflow Example

Let’s say your call center rep needs to update a customer’s payment info.

1. They launch Chargent’s Payment Console within Salesforce.
2. They enter your customer’s new card via a secure modal.
3. The token is stored and mapped automatically.
4. Once stored, your staff never sees the card number again, and no sensitive data ever touches Salesforce.

To further reduce PCI scope, your staff may opt to send your customer a Payment Request link instead, allowing the customer to enter their own payment details in order to tokenize the card and complete the payment. This approach reduces the exposure of sensitive card details to zero.

This ensures auditability, traceability, and security without adding friction for your team.

Reducing PCI Compliance Scope with Automation

The traditional PCI burden stems from one critical fact: if you store or transmit card data, you’re in scope. But Chargent and CyberSource allow you to re-architect your payment process to keep Salesforce out of scope entirely. Reducing scope simplifies your environment and reduces the risk to your organization while maintaining ease of use for your customers and high-quality reporting data.

Automated Compliance Hygiene

With tokenization and Chargent, your compliance game changes.

• Scope Reduction: Salesforce becomes a token-only environment, eliminating the need for extensive audits and penetration testing.
• Fewer Compensating Controls: No need to encrypt or mask fields in Salesforce because raw data never exists.
• Streamlined Audits: During your PCI DSS audit, you can demonstrate that no sensitive data is handled internally, significantly reducing documentation requirements.

Custom Salesforce Workflows for Compliance

You can build Salesforce Flow automations to:

• Flag soon to be expired tokens and notify the billing team to reach out.
• Activate Chargent’s Automated Collections feature to automatically retry failed payments on a set schedule using stored tokens.
• Set up real-time alerts if a tokenized payment fails, allowing for rapid intervention.

This turns compliance from a yearly burden into a systemic, built-in part of your payment infrastructure.

Real-World Scenarios

Tokenization isn’t theoretical. Here’s how organizations could improve their financial operations through implementing CyberSource.

Scenario 1: Nonprofit with Recurring Donations

A global nonprofit uses Salesforce NPSP to manage fundraising campaigns. 

Before tokenization:

• Staff manually stored donor card info in restricted fields.
• Recurring payments failed often due to expired cards.
• PCI audits were painful and costly.

After implementing Chargent with CyberSource:

• Donors submit payment info via a secure, hosted page.
• Tokens are stored on Contact records.
• Recurring gifts are triggered monthly via Salesforce Flow.
• PCI audits now take days, not weeks, with reduced liability.

Scenario 2: SaaS Company Avoids Revenue Leakage

A SaaS company offering usage-based billing was losing customers every month due to failed payments and retries that never happened.

With Chargent and CyberSource:

• All customers now have tokenized payment methods stored.
• Failed payments trigger an automated retry sequence.
• If a card expires, the customer is prompted to update it via a secure link.
• Revenue leakage is reduced, and the compliance burden has dropped dramatically.

These stories highlight the financial and operational gains possible from tokenization.

Best Practices for Implementation

1. Configure CyberSource Tokenization

• In your CyberSource account, enable the tokenization service and ensure that Flex Microform or Secure Acceptance is active.
• Set your account to return PCI-compliant tokens to the front end.

2. Set Up Chargent in Salesforce

• Install Chargent’s Salesforce package.
• Choose CyberSource as your Payment Gateway and input your credentials.

3. Train Your Users

• Clarify that no one should ever see or handle card data.
• Provide sandbox testing environments to walk through token creation and reuse.
• Set policies around token expiration management and transaction retries.

4. Monitor with Reports and Alerts

Use Salesforce’s native reporting to:

• Track how many transactions use tokens vs. raw entry (goal: 100% token use)
• Alert finance or RevOps teams to tokens expiring within 30 days
• Log failed token attempts and retry results for audit readiness

5. Document Everything

Create internal documentation covering:

• How tokens are generated and stored
• What data is PCI-relevant and what isn’t
• A list of custom fields that contain tokenized metadata

Well-documented systems are not only more compliant – they’re easier to support, scale, and audit.

Ready to put Tokenization to work?

Tokenization isn’t just a technical upgrade – it’s a strategic shift toward smarter, safer, and more scalable payment operations. By pairing CyberSource’s industry-leading tokenization with Chargent’s native Salesforce integration, you can reduce your PCI compliance scope, protect customer data, and build a payment system that’s future-proof and audit-ready. Whether you’re handling recurring donations, managing subscription billing, or scaling enterprise transactions, this approach keeps your team focused on growth, not security headaches. 

Ready to transform your Salesforce org into a secure payments powerhouse? Start your free Chargent trial today and see what secure, scalable payments in Salesforce should look like.