Mastercard is aiming to eliminate the need for manual card entry, passwords, and one-time codes for online purchases by 2030 through the use of tokenisation and biometrics.
As e-commerce grows, fraud rates on the internet remain significantly higher—up to seven times—than in physical stores, as criminals take advantage of exposed card numbers, resulting in challenges for cardholders and substantial losses for merchants and card issuers. Research from Mastercard indicates that nearly two-thirds of shoppers still face difficulties with manually entering their card details, leading to 25% of carts being abandoned due to a complex or slow checkout process.
Tokenisation, introduced by Visa and Mastercard in 2014, involves replacing the traditional 16-19 digit payment card number with a secure token. This not only reduces fraud but also enhances approval rates. By utilizing this technology, merchants can decrease cart abandonment and increase transaction approvals by three to six percentage points, generating up to $2 billion in additional global sales each month.
Currently, over 30% of Mastercard transactions globally are tokenised through the company’s Digital Enablement Service, with markets like India approaching nearly 100% tokenisation for e-commerce. Following a commitment to reach 100% e-commerce tokenisation in Europe by 2030, Mastercard has expanded this goal worldwide.
In addition, Mastercard is working to phase out passwords and one-time codes in the coming years. This year, the company began rolling out the Mastercard Payment Passkey Service in India, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates. This service replaces one-time codes with biometric authentication methods—such as fingerprints or facial recognition—and tokenisation to secure online checkout, ensuring that financial account data is not shared with third parties, effectively making it useless to fraudsters.
Another tool in Mastercard’s strategy is Click to Pay, which enables users to store multiple cards on their mobile devices, allowing for quick online purchases without the need to input card details or passwords.
“Just like the transition from signing and swiping to tapping cards, we’re now moving from manual entry and passwords to seamless and secure payments in just a few clicks. With this shift we are protecting sensitive data through advanced encryption and tokenisation technologies,” says Jorn Lambert, Chief Product Officer at Mastercard.