Prairie Cloudware

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, Prairie Cloudware, Inc. operated as a provider of mobile transaction software, positioning itself as a key intermediary in the digital payments ecosystem. The company, now listed as out of business, focused on enabling financial institutions like banks and credit unions to offer secure and convenient digital payment services to their customers.

Prairie Cloudware developed a powerful gateway designed to connect shopping applications, mobile wallets, and emerging token service providers. Its core product, the "Digital Payments Guardian," functioned as a digital vault for consumers to store and manage their various payment methods, including credit and debit cards. This platform was delivered through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, utilizing a virtual private cloud to ensure security. The primary business model revolved around providing this white-label solution to financial institutions, which could then brand it as their own mobile wallet, thereby increasing touchpoints with their customers.

The company's technology centered on tokenization to enhance security. Instead of transmitting sensitive card details during a transaction, the platform would generate a unique, one-time token. This token would be sent to the retailer and recognized by the card issuer to authorize payment, rendering the token useless for any subsequent transactions and protecting the actual card number from being stored by merchants. The Digital Payments Guardian supported NFC tap-and-pay transactions through Android HCE (Host Card Emulation). This allowed financial institutions to compete with major players by offering their own branded, secure mobile payment solutions for both online and in-store purchases. Keywords: digital payments, tokenization, mobile wallet, financial institutions, payment gateway, SaaS, mobile transactions, fintech, digital vault, payment security