Insider Spotlight:
The company says the shift will make digital commerce significantly safer and more seamless for consumers, especially as the region drives the world’s fastest e-commerce growth.
Why it matters:
Online fraud continues to escalate, and card-not-present attacks remain seven times higher than in-store transactions. At the same time, friction at checkout is causing eight in 10 shoppers to abandon their carts—almost half due to cumbersome authentication.
Mastercard argues that tokenization paired with biometrics can dramatically reverse these trends.
Driving full adoption:
Mastercard is pushing for 100-percent tokenization in Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam by 2027, following the near-complete rollout it supported in India.
These markets are at the heart of Southeast Asia’s digital boom, where digital payments are expected to dominate 94 percent of e-commerce transactions by 2028 in a market valued at $325 billion.
Tokenization replaces traditional card numbers with dynamic digital identifiers, preventing sensitive data from being exposed. Combined with on-device biometrics and Mastercard’s Click to Pay, the system promises an authentication flow that is both faster for consumers and more secure for merchants.
The results so far:
Where tokenization is already deployed, approval rates have improved by up to 6 percent, generating more than $2 billion in additional monthly sales for merchants—a tangible signal that security and convenience can reinforce each other.
Consumers benefit from one-step checkouts with fewer declines, while digital wallets gain wider acceptance across more than 150 million Mastercard-enabled global merchants.
What they’re saying:
“The vision is simple: no passwords, no manual card entry, no friction,” Sandeep Malhotra, Mastercard's executive vice president for core payments, Asia Pacific, said in a press release on Nov. 13, 2025.
“By uniting the industry, Mastercard is accelerating adoption of tokenization and payment passkeys to create a single, secure experience for password-free payments. As a result, approval rates are rising, fraud is falling, and millions of shoppers are enjoying faster, safer checkouts,” he added.
What’s next:
Mastercard sees tokenization as the foundation for “intelligent commerce,” where AI-powered digital assistants can securely shop and pay on behalf of users. The company’s success with Payment Passkey in India—enabling biometric checkout for millions—is shaping its broader 2030 vision for smart, secure digital payments across Asia Pacific. —Vanessa Hidalgo | Ed: Corrie S. Narisma
