LAS VEGAS — A software firm is offering retailers a method for making sure they don't retain credit and debit card information in their point of sale computer systems where hackers can access and steal it.

Shift4, which describes itself as “a leading developer of secure financial transaction processing software,” explained that its software uses something called “tokenization” to prevent card information from being stored on a retailer in the first place.

With “tokenization,” the merchant swipes the card and sends the information through a gateway to a processor and receives back an approval. But instead of sending the card information itself back to the merchant and the POS system, it is converted to a globally unique, randomized representation of the credit card number that is 16 characters long. Only the token is stored in the system.

“Encryption alone is not the answer. The best way to secure information is to not store useable information. In other words, they can't steal what you don't have,” says J. D. Oder II, chief technology officer for Shift4.