Data privacy provider Very Good Security (VGS) has launched an expanded partnership with data network Plaid to provide tokenization services, the company announced on Monday (May 16). Press release.

“Tokenization can help protect personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive data from exposure and use for harmful purposes,” VGS said in the statement. “VGS will provide PII tokenization and financial data backup services for Plaid customers. This will help ensure end-to-end data security for Plaid customers by seamlessly integrating VGS services alongside Plaid APIs.

See also: “Zero Data” empowers companies to control – and find value – in sensitive data

VGS also said its Tokenization and Zero Data platform enables businesses to leverage sensitive data through format preservation and full portability, allowing customers to avoid vendor lock-in and recoup time spent. data security hygiene and compliance maintenance.

“Creating and operating financial applications involves interacting with PII and sensitive account data,” said Hoang Leung, Head of Payment Products and Solutions at VGS. “Tech companies building these apps get more out of data when tokenization is used, creating protection for the end user and efficient, secure operations for the business.”

Leung added that the partnership will allow Plaid customers to add new data security without disrupting their ecosystems, giving them the ability to derive more value from their data.

Last month, Plaid partnered with data privacy platform Skyflow to help developers build apps with data privacy infrastructure using its application programming interface (API). Skyflow’s Data Privacy Vault offering helps customers build FinTech applications with data privacy, security, and compliance tools.

Read more: Skyflow, Plaid Partner on Data Protection and Privacy for FinTechs

With this partnership, Skyflow offers predefined logins to Plaid products and a predefined vault path for Plaid customers, giving developers and users confidence that data accessed through Plaid will be stored securely.

PYMNTS spoke last year with Mahmoud Abdelkader, CEO and co-founder of VGS, about the value of a concept known as “zero data”.

Mechanically, zero data allows companies to map proprietary payment service provider (PSP) tokens and the underlying primary account number to a global alias, bringing together transactions for a given card or customer, regardless of location, channel or PSP. Zero data allows companies to reduce layers of customer activity — Abdelkader likened it to an onion — and forge stronger customer relationships.