Mastercard Digital Wellness Program to Enhance Transparency, Security and Choice for Online Shopping

AI technology and suite of resources empowers small and independent businesses, makes password-free, online checkouts more secure for cardholders

Mastercard launched the Mastercard Digital Wellness program, a host of technologies and resources that enable all businesses, especially small and independent merchants, to better serve today’s digital-first consumer.

As part of this program, Mastercard will deploy EMVCo’s specification for fast, click-to-pay check-out for digital commerce. The specification replaces laborious key-entry guest check-out with a consistent, simple and secure guest checkout experience, no matter where a consumer shops online, or which device or card they use.“We launched Mastercard Digital Wellness today because we believe that businesses shouldn’t have to sacrifice safety or choice as they build the best experiences for their customers,” said Jess Turner, executive vice president, Digital Payments and Labs, North America, Mastercard. “Any changes to how we shop online must deliver enhanced levels of security, transparency and flexibility for everyone.”

According to a Deloitte study on small businesses in the U.S., enterprises that were more digitally advanced were four times more likely to achieve revenue growth. Mastercard is bringing its resources and knowledge of secure digital commerce to businesses that form the backbone of the U.S. economy.

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Merchants that enable the click-to-pay standard with Mastercard will automatically get access to an added layer of security through tokenization and NuData, a Mastercard artificial intelligence and machine learning technology. NuData works with retailers around the globe to help anticipate and prevent fraud by monitoring website traffic changes, analyzing sudden changes in browser type, surfing speed and time spent on web pages, allowing businesses to either monitor further or stop access. During the 2018 holiday season, NuData, helped businesses worldwide identify over 1 billion irregular digital activities and stopped 99 percent of these fraudulent attacks, saving them over $500 million.

Importantly, by implementing the Mastercard Digital Wellness program, merchants will benefit from access to tokenization and NuData for both streamlined guest check-out sales as well as their card-on-file business.

Recent market analysis from Mastercard has identified key opportunities for retailers to improve their customer experience. Unease about online payment security and challenging user-account creation experiences were pinpointed as the top reasons consumers abandon a purchase before completion. As a result, shoppers are often cautious of storing their card details with smaller, newer merchants.

Businesses that enable the EMVCo click-to-pay specification with Mastercard can streamline and secure their card-on-file and guest check-out experiences. Mastercard cardholders will no longer be required to enter a password before they pay online, and the suite of products and services available in the Mastercard Digital Wellness program will help to increase approval rates, lower fraud and reduce PCI compliance burden. Mastercard is working with payment processors and payment platforms such as Worldpay, Square, Adyen, Mastercard Payment Gateway Services, and Stripe to make these features available to more businesses more quickly.

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“Expanding the availability of a secure, simple and consistent ecommerce guest checkout experience to small businesses brings great potential,” said Amy Zirkle, interim CEO, Electronic Transactions Association (ETA). “We share Mastercard’s belief that both the acquiring community and payment service providers play a critical role in supporting how merchants connect to the consumer.”

Mastercard Digital Wellness, a one-stop resource for all things digital for small business:

In addition to the security capabilities of NuData and support for the EMVCo standard, businesses that participate in the Mastercard Digital Wellness program will get access to a diverse set of resources and tools to protect and empower business owners. It includes a cyber toolkit for small businesses to combat online attacks, and access to the Cyber Readiness Program from the Cyber Readiness Institute, an initiative designed to help organizations educate their workforce on issues like phishing, authentication and patching. Additional resources will be introduced over time, providing business owners guidance how to manage and grow their business as well.

Mastercard Digital Wellness will roll out first to all U.S. businesses; the new click-to-pay checkout will be live for U.S. cardholders and merchants during the third quarter of this year.

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