A credit card vault is a PCI DSS-certified environment that stores cardholder data – primarily Primary Account Numbers (PANs) – on behalf of a merchant. Instead of storing raw card data yourself, you store a token: a non-sensitive reference that maps back to the original credential inside the vault.

Because your infrastructure never holds the PAN, it falls outside the most demanding PCI controls, dramatically reducing your compliance burden while you still transact normally using the token.

→ Guardian handles PCI vaulting for enterprise merchants