No card details, no passwords: changing the way we pay online

Forget about having to plug in all your card details online every single time ... Click to Pay with Mastercard is making this a thing of the past

Online shopping has made buying from our favourite retailers so much quicker and easier, but if we’re honest, we’d admit the process isn’t always as simple or painless as it could be. We’ve all abandoned a virtual basket at some point after forgetting our password or not having our long card number to hand.

But these situations and many more will be a thing of the past, thanks to a new technology transforming transactions. Click to Pay with Mastercard is an ambitious solution designed to set the standard for online checkout by reducing hassle and providing even more protection.

As consumers, we’ve become used to speedily tapping our cards or phones on a reader in a shop to buy something – and Click to Pay offers the same development for online checkout. It’s ready to solve a host of challenges; many of which have been identified from Mastercard’s research and will sound familiar to most online shoppers. For instance, nearly half of those questioned said typing in long card numbers and addresses is something they’d love to avoid.

And Agnes Woolrich, senior vice-president, customer solutions at Mastercard, has good news on that front. “Click to Pay gives people a faster, simpler, and more secure way to check out online without manually inputting your card details and no passwords,” she promises.

Woolrich describes this new way to pay as a “smooth, safe experience”. Instead of entering a 16-digit card number, expiry date, and three-digit security code, UK shoppers will pay with just a click or two. (It’s not called Click to Pay for nothing.)

Enrolling is easy. It starts with creating a profile with your bank’s mobile banking app and then adding personal, payment, and billing info. You then prove you’re you by entering a passkey, a six-digit code sent to your mobile phone. Once that’s done, each time you see the Click to Pay logo on a website you want to buy from, payment will happen without inputting all those details over again. Your email address will be recognised and checkout will be authorised by you with a one-time passkey.

Click to Pay has been built to protect the consumer and ensure they’re always in control. It keeps people safe by creating a secure digital token in the background that represents all the necessary personal and payment card details. This is then used to complete the purchase – and the token is meaningless if stolen because each one is “uniquely mapped” to the individual cardholder, merchant, and transaction; it can’t ever be reused. With Click to Pay, we can all say goodbye to the struggle of not having our card by our side when we spot a bargain or if we’re buying from a site with limited payment options.

The system also works with a guest checkout so you don’t have to create an account with an online retailer you haven’t shopped with before. Right now, Mastercard is already halfway through its ambition to tokenise all transactions in Europe by 2030 and there’s certainly demand for the service. Its research shows that 67% of UK shoppers have abandoned an online shopping basket in the past 12 months because checkout was too slow, confusing, or felt unsafe.

“Payment technology has evolved,” says Woolrich. “Instead of sharing your full card number, your payment details are turned into a secure digital code that can’t be used by fraudsters, even if it’s intercepted.”

The technology represents a major step forward for online checkout safety. The use of tokens ensures scammers have nothing useful to steal and this gives peace of mind to both consumers and retailers.

“Click to Pay is built with protection at its core,” says Woolrich. “It looks out for consumers by recognising when it’s really them using elements like their device and how they’d usually shop. This makes paying online simpler and safer from start to finish.”

Click to Pay
Find out more about how Mastercard’s state of the art payment technologies are working behind the scenes to provide a seamless and safe shopping experience online at mastercard.com