Mastercard plans to cancel credit card numbers and switch to tokenization technology to reduce the risk of information leakage

According to Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao, MasterCard is planning to cancel traditional credit card numbers and adopt "token technology" to combat online fraud. This technology replaces sensitive data such as credit card numbers with randomly generated numerical sequences (tokens) to reduce the risk of data leakage. Mastercard CEO Mibach stated that the company will expand the use of this technology and replace traditional passwords with biometric recognition such as fingerprints or facial scans. This measure is in response to the increasingly serious problem of online payment fraud, which is expected to exceed $91 billion by 2028. Mibach pointed out that the conventional thinking in the past was to protect data and transactions with passwords to ensure security, but this approach has gradually become a security vulnerability. However, "authentication technology" replaces sensitive information with "tokens", and even if the data is illegally accessed by hackers, it cannot decipher the true information. In addition, 'authentication technology' also helps businesses comply with data protection regulations such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Mastercard predicts that by the end of this century, all e-commerce transactions in Europe will be replaced by "tokens".