Mastercard launches roadmap to boost online payment security in LatAm, Caribbean
Mastercard has announced a new roadmap to help banks, retailers, and partners extend the security of online payments and improve the consumer experience with a comprehensive set of initiatives and security services based on the most advanced technologies in the industry.
Mastercard executives said this comes as e-commerce is rising in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and will soon become the new normal; demand for e-commerce in LAC is growing from 126 million people in 2016 to 156 million people in 2019, while increasing sales made online from $40 billion in 2016 to $80 billion in 2019.
This will increase expectations of seamless online payment experiences with unquestioned security and convenience.
To accelerate the adoption of cutting-edge technologies needed to keep the e-commerce space safe — and in line with the latest standards of the industry (EMV 3D) for authentication of online transactions, Mastercard’s Digital Security Roadmap will provide a set of initiatives, guidelines and tools for banks and retailers in LAC.
The collaborative industry efforts will include partnerships with governments and regulators, educational workshops with banks and e-retailers, and the introduction of the latest technologies and services related to online security.
“As e-commerce continues to grow in LAC, we want to go from playing defense to playing offense when it comes to online security by promoting the adoption of the latest technologies, helping reduce fraud levels, and in turn ensuring the best experience for the consumer,” said Jeff Wilson, executive vice president of services at Mastercard.
According to the executive, the Digital Security Roadmap will focus primarily on accelerating the adoption of authentication and tokenization technologies in 2019.
Authentication technologies allow merchants and banks to ensure that online shoppers are who they say they are. By August of this year, one of the authentication advances that Mastercard is making available to the banks is a new decision and fraud detection service based on artificial intelligence.
This solution (Decision Intelligence) is designed to measure the level of risk of a transaction and help banks increase the accuracy of payment approvals.
As of February 2019, consumers in LAC will not have to do anything when their card has expired; Mastercard will securely communicate consumers new card details to their preferred merchants (Automatic Billing Updater) and — upon consumer request — block those transactions if not relevant anymore.
Considering the rise of online shopping, dynamic tokenization is also crucial for merchants that store consumer card information in their online systems. Tokenization technology can help them keep that personal data safe by replacing it for an alternate number (“token”), a set of 16 digits that emulates the real card number and can be use only once. In the case of a breach, fraudsters would only have access to the token instead of the consumer’s payment information, reducing the probability of fraud.
“We’re excited to implement and accelerate our digital security roadmap in LAC in partnership with our stakeholders. By having a framework for the modern payments landscape, we are in an ideal position to continue delivering seamless payment experiences for consumers, both offline and online and to remain innovating the highest levels of security through our solutions,” said Wilson.
