Mastercard to phase out manual card entry for online payments in Europe by 2030
Roberto Machado Noa/ LightRocket via Getty Images
LONDON — The experience of paying for products and services online could feel a lot different in the coming years.
Starting from 2030, Mastercard will no longer require Europeans to enter their card numbers manually when checking out online — no matter what platform or device they’re using.
Mastercard will announce Tuesday in a fireside chat with CNBC that, by 2030, all cards it issues on its network in Europe will be tokenized.
In other words, instead of the 16-digit card number we’re all accustomed to using for transactions, this will be replaced with a randomly generated “token.”
The firm says it’s been working with banks, fintechs, merchants and other partners to phase out manual card entry for e-commerce by 2030 in Europe, in favor of a one-click button across all online platforms.
This will ensure that consumers’ cards are secure against fraud attempts, Mastercard says.
Users won’t have to keep entering passwords every time they try to make a payment, as Mastercard is introducing passkeys that replace passwords.
It will also enable customers to make one-click payments at checkout using biometric authentication with a thumbprint.
Cards stored in a merchants’ page or electronic wallet via tokenization can be automatically updated wherever they’re stored when they’re replaced or renewed.
Reducing fraud
Mastercard says 100% tokenization across e-commerce sites will reduce fraud rates dramatically.
According to market research firm Juniper Research, losses from online payment fraud are expected to exceed $91 billion by 2028 — totaling more than $362 billion globally over the next five years.
Adoption of tokenization, Mastercard says, has been increasing at a rate of 50% each year and now secures about 25% of all e-commerce transactions globally across its network.
Mastercard said it’s rolling out the change in Europe as the Continent has long been a leader in payments innovations, such as contactless payments and online banking, which allowed banking users to share their accounts’ data to access new financial products.
“In Europe we have seen tokenization gaining momentum across the ecosystem, the convenience and reduced rates of fraud sell themselves,” Valerie Nowak, executive vice president, product and innovation at Mastercard Europe, said in a statement.
“We are confident that reaching this vision by 2030 is a win-win-win for shoppers, retailers and the card issuers alike.”
Future of payments
From the arrival of credit cards for the first time in the 1950s and 1960s, to the shift toward paying for things online that came with the widespread adoption of the internet in the early 2000s, the ways we pay have undergone a few pretty dramatic changes throughout the decades.
In the early days when credit cards were first introduced, bank clerks would check card numbers against a book of invalid numbers or call the issuing bank to check the person making the payment is who they say they are.
So-called zip-zap machines that would imprint card numbers on carbon paper packets were the primary way of paying via credit card at the checkout counter.
That was until the 1970s and 1980s, when magnetic stripes and electronic payment terminals took over.
They were succeeded by cards with microchips that stored data on the card’s owner, number and expiry date.
Mastercard is betting its move toward this new “embedded” payment system will be as dramatic a shift as the move toward chip and PIN, or the adoption of contactless payments, which are now widely used in developed economies across the world.
The company says its technology will make the experience of paying for items online as smooth as making a contactless payment in-store. It says it means that consumers will be able to make payments with one click across any device including smartwatches, home assistants and even cars.
For example, Mastercard has a partnership with Mercedes-Benz that allows the automaker’s customers to use a fingerprint sensor in their car to make digital payments at more than 3,600 service stations across Germany.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta’s AI assistant now has 1 billion monthly active users across the company’s family of apps, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.
The “focus for this year is deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI with an emphasis on personalization, voice conversations and entertainment,” Zuckerberg said.
The artificial intelligent assistant’s 1 billion milestone comes after the company in April released a standalone app for the tool.
The plan is for Meta to keep growing the product before building a business around it, Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. As Meta AI improves overtime, Zuckerberg said “there will be opportunities to either insert paid recommendations” or offer “a subscription service so that people can pay to use more compute.”
In February, CNBC reported that Meta was planning to debut a standalone Meta AI app during the second quarter and test a paid-subscription service akin to rival chat apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“It may seem kind of funny that a billion monthly actives doesn’t seem like it’s at scale for us, but that’s where we’re at,” Zuckerberg told shareholders.
During the Meta shareholder meeting, investors voted on 14 different items related to the company’s business, nine of which were shareholder proposals covering topics such as child safety, greenhouse gas emissions and a proposed bitcoin treasury assessment.
Shareholder proposal 8, for example, was submitted by JLens, which is an investment advisor and affiliate of the Anti-Defamation League, and called for Meta to prepare an annual report detailing and addressing hate content, including antisemitism, on its services following January policy changes that relaxed content-moderation guidelines.
Early voting results on Wednesday showed the proposals that Meta’s board did not recommend were unlikely to pass, including one calling for the company to end its dual-class share structure, which gives Zuckerberg significant voting power. Meanwhile, the voting items that the board favored, including those pertaining to approving the company’s board of director nominees and an equity incentive plan, were likely to pass, based on the preliminary results.
Meta said final polling results will be released within four business days on the company’s website and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff participates in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2025.
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Salesforce shares were volatile in extended trading on Wednesday after the sales and customer service software maker reported upbeat fiscal first-quarter results and guidance.
Here’s how the company performed relative to LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: $2.58 adjusted vs. 2.54 expected
- Revenue: $9.83 billion vs. $9.75 billion expected
Salesforce’s revenue grew 7.6% year over year in the quarter, which ended on April 30, according to a statement. Net income of $1.54 billion, or $1.59 per share, was basically flat compared with $1.53 billion, or $1.56 per share, a year ago.
President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. in early April. Co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff sounded positive about the company’s results for the quarter anyway, pointing to its plan, announced on Tuesday, to buy data management company Informatica for $8 billion.
It would be Salesforce’s priciest acquisition since the $27.1 billion Slack deal in 2021. Slack marked the top end of the buyouts Salesforce had made under Benioff. Activist investors raised concerns about all the spending, in addition to slowing revenue growth.
Salesforce sprung into action, slashing 10% of its headcount. Benioff proclaimed that the board’s mergers and acquisitions committee had been disbanded. The company’s finance chief at the time said it would reach a margin expansion goal two years early. And Salesforce started paying dividends to shareholders.
Initial reception to the Informatica announcement was generally favorable. “Salesforce is paying a reasonable multiple for the asset, in our view, and the deal should be more easily digested by investors than some of the company’s large deals in the past (i.e. Slack),” Stifel analysts led by J. Parker Lane wrote in a note to clients. The investment bank has a buy rating on Salesforce shares.
During the fiscal first quarter, Salesforce introduced the AgentExchange marketplace for artificial intelligence agents.
Management sees $2.76 to $2.78 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.11 billion to $10.16 billion in revenue for the fiscal second quarter. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $2.73 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.01 billion in revenue.
Salesforce bumped up its full-year forecast. It called for $11.27 to $11.33 in adjusted earnings per share and $41.0 billion to $41.3 billion in revenue, implying revenue growth between 8% and 9%. The LSEG consensus included net income of $11.16 per share and $40.82 billion in revenue. The guidance in February was $11.09 to $11.17 in adjusted earnings per share, with $40.5 billion to $40.9 billion in revenue.
As of Wednesday’s close, the stock had slipped about 18% so far in 2025, while the S&P index was unchanged.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
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