François Chaffard | VP PAY Digital Services
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François Chaffard | VP PAY Digital Services
More About This Author >
Clara buys a pair of running shoes from her phone. She picks the color and hits “Buy Now,” and the shoes are ordered. No need to enter card details. No passwords. No further actions. Just a purchase, instant and convenient. But she was authenticated, and securely so. Her checkout process is part of a larger shift that’s quietly reshaping how we sell, buy, and prove who we are.
Payment and their authentication are undergoing an invisible revolution, fading into the background for users’ convenience.
In this shift, new digital form factors are replacing traditional ones. A card number typed on screen gives way to a token stored on your phone. A password becomes a fingerprint.
By 2030, Mastercard expects all eCommerce transactions in the EU to be tokenized and Visa aims at 100% tokenization of digital transactions—spelling the end of manually typing 16-digit card numbers, replaced instead by tokens. These tokens are tightly bound to a device, app, or merchant, making them more secure and invisible to the user. It's a shift that addresses rising fraud, but it’s also a direct response to shoppers’ demand for seamless digital journeys.
For online merchants and issuers alike, this represents a win-win. But to capture the upside, they must rethink how identity and trust are managed at every stage of the payment flow.
Invisible payments, visible outcomes
Traditionally, checkout comes with pauses. Think filling in card details, static or one-time passwords and additional authentication requests. It breaks the flow, just for a moment, but enough to interrupt something that can make or break the sale.
That’s changing. New payment models let you move through seamlessly, because the system already knows who you are. Not from memory, necessarily, but from context.
Click to Pay and Payment Passkeys are leading this transformation.
The Click to Pay experience is made possible by tokenization, which protects card credentials. Tokenization replaces sensitive card data with unique credentials that are only valid in a specific setting—like a merchant, app, or device—creating new ready-to-use payment options. This protects cardholder data whether it’s stored or transmitted. With Click to Pay, consumers don’t have to re-enter card details every time—while still being protected behind network-secured credentials.
Payment Passkeys go a step further. They replace passwords entirely with device-based biometric authentication—fingerprints, facial scans. There’s no code to remember, nothing to type. Payment passkeys bound the payment credentials to the device, adding a second authentication factor. This makes Payment Passkeys the most secure and seamless way to complete a checkout with just a “yes” or “confirm” on a trusted device.
When combined with Click to Pay, Payment Passkeys eliminate friction at both levels—identifying card credentials and authenticating the user—creating a checkout that is fast, secure, and nearly invisible.
These technologies represent a new form factor of identity verification, one that works on the principle of recognition, less about saying “here are my credentials and password,” and more “you already know it’s me”.
Reducing complexity with Thales D1
As digital payments become more sophisticated, banks and payment providers need smarter ways to manage identity—credentials, passkeys, tokens, and risk checks—all at once.
Thales D1 is purpose-built for this challenge. As a modern issuing and payment platform, D1 coordinates token provisioning, Payment Passkeys and Click to Pay enrollment through pre-integrated workflows.
For issuers, D1 means faster adoption of emerging standards like Payment Passkeys and Click to Pay. For users, it means secure, invisible payment experiences that just work.
Banco Santa Cruz achieved Click to Pay implementation with Thales in three months —one of the most aggressive rollouts in LATAM—and became the first bank in Latin America and the Caribbean to be Click to Pay Visa certified for this new online payment method allowing purchases to be made without manually entering card details.
From security layer to strategic differentiator
This is the paradox of modern payment authentication: the stronger it gets, the less we notice it. We’re moving from “proving” who we are to simply being recognized and trusted.
Embedding trust invisibly into every transaction is rapidly becoming a key differentiator in the global eCommerce market. And if that market has taught us anything, it’s the value of moving fast and smart. And as shoppers like Clara expect faster, easier and secure checkouts, platforms that manage identity silently in the background are becoming essential to make that happen.
Payment processes and authentication may be fading from view, but for issuers it now belongs front and center of their strategic roadmaps.