Cat-09 · T823 · Card Economics
v1.0

Card-Data Architecture TCO Comparator

Compare tokenization vault, network token, hosted fields, and proxy passthrough architectures for card data using only numbers you supply: the per-call vendor fee, one-time integration cost, and the annual assessment cost you carry at the SAQ level you declare for each approach. Outputs horizon TCO per architecture, pairwise break-even volumes with remainders, and SAQ-level cost deltas, all in fixed-point minor units.

Scope and reliance: 🔒 All inputs are processed locally in your browser. No data is transmitted. Do not enter real personal data — use synthetic or anonymised inputs only. Architecture labels are vendor-neutral: the calculator performs arithmetic on your numbers and treats each declared SAQ level as a label you typed, leaving eligibility and qualification to your own assessor. Cited text was retrieved as of November 2026; verify against the current official text and your own QSA or acquirer before relying on any output, since this page is not legal, compliance, or assessment advice. Deterministic logic · no inference · zero PII · runs offline · CC BY 4.0.
Vendor-Neutral Fixed-Point Minor Units Zero PII Client-Side
🔒 All inputs are processed locally in your browser. No data is transmitted. Do not enter real personal data — use synthetic or anonymised inputs only.
Scope
Whole number of authorization or storage calls the vendor handles each year.
Used for the per-card volume statistic reported with the results.
Enter 3 for the three-year total cost.
Annual assessment cost per SAQ level (minor units)
Money fields take integer minor units: cents for USD, so 1500000 means 15,000.00. Meanings of the SAQ levels are published by the PCI SSC outside the standard text; this page cites nothing for them and treats every level as the label you declare.
Architecture inputs (minor units throughout)
Tokenization vault
A vault service exchanges each PAN for a surrogate token and holds the mapping; detokenization happens inside the vault.
Network tokens
The card network issues a token per provisioned card; the vendor documentation states that network tokens are not cardholder data outside the Token Data Environment under PCI DSS.
Hosted fields
Vendor-rendered input fields inside your checkout; raw card data goes directly to the vendor and your systems never hold it.
Proxy passthrough
Card data crosses a vendor proxy in transit; storage and processing roles stay where they are today.