MasterCard Digital Enablement Service Propels Growth of Secure Digital Transactions across Europe with More than 60 Projects Underway 

The adoption of digital payments continues to grow worldwide with MasterCard predicting that by 2020, 38 percent of payments made throughout Europe will be digital. This shift in consumer behavior will be powered safely and securely by the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service (MDES), which enables every commerce device to make payments through industry-standard tokenization.

First launched in the US in 2014 with Apple Pay, today card issuers and wallet service providers have MDES projects in progress in 18 countries across Europe. In the UK, MDES already connects banks representing more than 70% of UK account holders to Apple Pay. Among digital wallet operators connecting to MDES, Google recently announced their intention to launch Android Pay in the UK.

“MDES is the foundation for so much of the progress we have achieved in offering secure digital transactions that allow consumers to pay, where and how they want with peace of mind knowing that their transaction and payment information are protected,” said Chris Kangas, Head of Mobile NFC Payment Solutions in Europe. “Consumers will have more choices for using their cards in digitized form as wallet operators bring their solutions to market.”

Launched in 2013, MDES serves as the foundation of secure digital payments, ensuring consumers have the highest level of safety and security, no matter how they pay. The launch of Apple Pay in 2014 incorporated MDES into Apple’s digital wallet, which was quickly followed by Samsung Pay and Android Pay adopting the platform.

Jill Thornton, Senior Change Manager at MBNA, added, “We’re one of the first to offer payments across the wave of new digital wallet providers – and working with MasterCard on MDES has enabled us to extend this choice of payment methods. We’re able to offer secure digital payments and we continue to invest heavily in giving our customers greater choice and convenience in how they pay.”

In addition to consumer adoption through digital wallets, MasterCard is making it easier for issuers and merchants of all sizes to gain access to tokenization services with MDES Express and MDES for Merchants. MDES Express marked a critical evolution for the service by streamlining the contracting process between financial institutions and digital payment services. Additionally, MDES for Merchants, provides online merchants a token solution, in combination with a transaction-specific cryptogram, to deliver EMV-based security for card-on-file transactions. The service helps merchants minimize fraudulent transactions and associated costs, reduce the risks and costs associated with storing card numbers, and has the potential to improve approval rates.

The platform is also being used to deliver payments to a wide array of consumer products across the automotive, fashion, technology, and wearables categories, giving consumers the freedom to shop using the device that is most convenient to them, with the highest level of security available. At Mobile World Congress 2016, MasterCard and Coin announced a developer program for accelerating the integration of payments into wearables that significantly reduces the barrier to entry for device manufacturers. Developers now have access to MDES and Coin’s proprietary technology for enabling payments in a scalable way.

“As the payments ecosystem shifts from plastic to digital and consumers choose to pay with a variety of gadgets and devices, MDES offers safety and security across the entire value chain, ensuring issuers, merchants, and consumers have access to the safest way to pay across continents,” said David Dechamps, head of Digital Payments Europe at MasterCard.

Source: MasterCard

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