Mastercard has chosen India as the launchpad for its Payment Passkey Service, a new way of conducting online transactions, marking a significant step in the global payments landscape.
The new service will initially pilot in India with some of the country’s largest payment players, including payment aggregators such as Juspay, Razorpay, and PayU, along with major online merchants like bigbasket and leading banks such as Axis Bank, Mastercard said in a statement.
Unlike traditional one-time passwords (OTPs), which have become increasingly vulnerable to phishing, SIM swapping, and message interception, payment passkeys utilize biometric data stored on a user’s device to authenticate transactions. This not only speeds up the checkout process but also adds a layer of security that is believed to be much harder for fraudsters to bypass.