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If you have read our Token Vault introduction page, you have seen that Payrails offers multiple ways to use our Token Vault, as a standalone Token Vault or within the Payment Orchestration and Processing with Payrails. If you would like to use Payment Processing module and need to tokenize payment instruments in this module where the customer is facing a card form on a website or mobile app, you can switch to reading tokenize payment instruments. In online businesses, various processes require collecting and handling users’ sensitive data. While the most common case is gathering customers’ card information on a checkout page, some flows involve sharing data between software systems via HTTP-based APIs. Regardless of the method, dealing with sensitive information comes with critical compliance and security challenges — this is where Payrails Vault helps merchants with proxy solutions. Diagram: customers and third parties connect to the merchant vault, which sends outbound connections to providers If you would like to use our Vault as a proxy solution, where you will receive or send sensitive data by using our PCI-compliant vault, this page will help you navigate the concept of proxy connections and records. There are many use cases regarding where proxy connections are used. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of examples:
  • When the card data is not coming from the end-user on a checkout page but instead from a third-party entity, such as a travel agency, a hotel, or an airline.
  • When the stored card data in our Vault is sent to payment processors or other PCI DSS-compliant third parties, such as travel industry partners or partners using other external Token Vaults.
Payrails has 2 types of Vault Proxy:
  1. Instant Proxy: Proxy payment instruments to payment providers without prior configuration.
This is used for simple flows such as tokenizing payment instruments via Payrails Frontend SDKs and sending those instruments to a Payment Provider that doesn’t require a path or regex configuration. Visit Instant Proxy guide to read more.
  1. Configurable Proxy: Proxy any record to any third party via configured connections.
This is a highly flexible and configurable way of proxying data. You can tokenize or detokenize any type of records via this flow. The following pages of this guide describe Payrails’ Proxy Connections feature, how to use Configurable Proxy for proxying sensitive data, and the concept of ‘Record’ and ‘Alias’ which solves these and many more use cases. Both approaches ensure compliance and security while keeping our merchants’ systems outside the scope of PCI DSS requirements. Like any of our modules, Proxies can be used as a standalone product or integrated with the rest of the Payrails ecosystem.
Last modified on October 30, 2026