Mastercard Dumps Plastic: Full Shift to Tokenized Payments by 2030

Goodbye swipe, hello crypto-style security. Mastercard just announced it's phasing out manual card transactions entirely—replacing them with tokenized payments by 2030.

No more magstripes, no more embossed numbers. Your card details get replaced with randomized digital tokens for every transaction. Hackers? Good luck cracking this vault.

Wall Street analysts are already calling it 'too little, too late'—after all, Bitcoin’s been doing this since 2009. But hey, at least your grandma won’t have to learn what a seed phrase is… yet.

Mastercard reports that nearly 50% of its online transactions in Europe are now tokenized—a 33% increase year over year. By 2030, manual card entry will be obsolete pic.twitter.com/C3jlDb4HMi

— MantleWorks (@MantleWorks) June 5, 2025

The MOVE comes after Mastercard through its research found that 54% of Europeans feel irritated when asked to create an account at checkout, and 82% report some level of frustration navigating friction-heavy processes.

Critical Partners

For tokenisation, Mastercard has partnered with Checkout.com, Delivery Hero (eFood, Foody, Foodora, and Glovo), Global Collect (Worldline), Monext, and Santander.

Matias Sanchez, Global Head of Cards and Digital Solutions at Santander said, “With tokenisation, their card details are better protected, making checkout easier, faster, and more secure. Partnering with Mastercard allows us to bring this extra LAYER of safety, therefore Click to Pay is one of our top priorities.”

Meanwhile for Click to Pay, Mastercard partnered with Autopay, Consors Finanz BNP Paribas, Fiserv, ICA Banken, Lendable, Nickel, N26, Ogone (Worldline), PayU, SaferPay (Worldline), SIX, and tPay

For payment passkeys, Mastercard partnered with Dintero, Netopia, Solidgate. As the first European processor to combine this with Click to Pay, we’re proud to offer a faster, safer, password-free experience, setting a new standard for digital commerce and building on our strong partnership with Mastercard.” said Marius Costin, Netopia CEO.

Recent Crypto Expansion Moves By Mastercard

Just last month, MoonPay teamed up with Mastercard to launch a new suite of stablecoin payment cards. This move enables seamless digital asset spending at over 150 million merchants worldwide. The MoonPay Mastercard global stablecoin payment card will allow users to pay with stablecoins such as USDC, USDT, DAI. For Mastercard, this is another move in crypto expansion.

Recently Mastercard also announced that it will provide a “360-degree approach where consumers can spend stablecoins and merchants can receive them.” This approach included partnerships with crypto wallets like MetaMask, Kraken, Gemini, Bybit, Crypto.com, Binance, Monavate, and Bleap to allow consumers to buy stablecoins easily with their credit/debit cards, as well as withdraw them into their bank accounts easily.

Kraken and Mastercard have also announced a new partnership. It focuses on digital assets in everyday transactions across the UK and Europe. At the CORE of the Kraken-Mastercard partnership was a simple goal: to make crypto spending as seamless as using traditional currency.

In January 2025, the company launched Crypto Credential solution for the people of UAE and Kazakhstan in the EMEA region.

Key Takeaways

• Mastercard said that its goal is to support 100% tokenised e-commerce transactions in Europe by 2030. 50% of its e-commerce transactions in Europe are already tokenised.

• To focus on crypto expansion, the company is focusing on many new partnerships. Recently, it partnered with MoonPay, Kraken and more.