US e-commerce and payment processing company First Data has expanded the pilot of the First Data TransArmor solution.

More than 400 U.S. merchants are expected to assess the data security solution over the coming four months. The TransArmor solution (previously called First Data Secure Transaction Management) was developed in partnership with EMC Corporation.

The TransArmor solution removes the payment card data from the merchant environment as part of processing the transaction, thus lowering the risk and the scope of PCI compliance efforts.

The solution leverages the RSA SafeProxy architecture, a combination of asymmetric encryption, tokenization and key management engineered to provide protection and eliminate on-site cardholder data storage for merchants. The token’s features make it possible for merchants to continue to handle business functions such as returns, recurring billing, loyalty programs and other analysis, without enabling card data to be used for fraudulent transactions.

TransArmor can be implemented without the need for new hardware or back-end IT operations. The solution works with First Data as well as other terminals or point-of-sale systems and can be applied across brick-and-click environments.