12:41 PM EDT, 06/11/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Mastercard ( MA ) plans to phase out manual card entry for online payments in Europe by 2030 and adopt e-commerce tokenization alongside click-to-pay and biometric authentication in an attempt to better protect merchants and consumers against fraud.

The credit card company said Tuesday it will begin replacing the 16 to 19 digit number on European-issued payment cards with a secure token. Leveraged alongside streamlined guest checkout and payment passkeys, Mastercard ( MA ) hopes to reach 100% e-commerce tokenization in the region by the end of the decade.

To support these efforts, Mastercard ( MA ) will make it easier for merchants to embed its click-to-pay service on their sites and empower bank partners to assist customers with card enrollment. The passkey technology will leverage mobile device-based biometric authentication to eliminate passwords and one-time codes.

The move follows the proliferation of contactless in-person payments that Mastercard ( MA ) said have reduced fraud. There's an opportunity to bring that same experience to e-commerce, giving consumers faster and safer checkouts while providing merchants increased sales, enhanced fraud protection and higher approval rates, it said.

"In Europe we have seen tokenization gaining momentum across the ecosystem, the convenience and reduced rates of fraud sell themselves," said Valerie Nowak, Mastercard Europe's executive vice president of product and innovation.

Mastercard ( MA ) first introduced its tokenization service in 2014 and it now secures 25% of all e-commerce transactions globally through the technology. Adoption is accelerating by 50% year over year, it said.

Chief Executive Michael Miebach said last month that digital transactions will be fully biometrically authenticated and tokenized in the future, according to a Capital IQ transcript of a JPMorgan industry conference.

"When the world takes all these technologies and puts them to bear everywhere, I think there's tremendous opportunity for us," he said.

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