Case Study: HauteLook achieves secure card tokenization and reduced chargebacks with WEX

HauteLook - Customer Case Study

Hautelook, a member-only online retailer for discounted luxury fashion (part of the Nordstrom family), needed a way to securely store members’ credit cards without allowing sensitive data into its environment, while also supporting anti-fraud checks, iPhone/Android apps, high-volume surge processing, and private‑label card reporting. WEX provided a tokenization and through‑processing solution (a CardVault-style tokenization service with a Silent POST card‑collection utility) to capture card data directly to the vendor and keep it out of Hautelook’s systems.

WEX implemented direct browser-to-vendor card collection and tokenization, added AVS/CVV verification before tokens were stored, exposed a robust API for mobile checkout, and supported Level‑3 reporting for private‑label cards. The solution handled peak volumes (more than 30,000 daily transactions during the 2014 holiday season), reduced chargeback risk and storage costs, kept Hautelook out of scope for card-data breaches, and enabled secure, scalable mobile and web checkout.

Hautelook

Kevin Diamond

CTO