Taking a page from Amazon Pay, Mastercard is working with tech company EMVCo to create a one-click checkout experience for e-commerce customers. The payments giant said the new secure remote commerce specification will replace key-entry guest checkouts with a more secure, password-free option for Mastercard’s U.S. cardholders, regardless of which device or card they use. The rollout is anticipated in the third quarter of this year.

Jess Turner, executive v.p. of digital payments and labs for North America at Mastercard, said all the major card networks oversee EMVCo’s work. The click-to-pay feature will be part of a larger initiative called the Mastercard Digital Wellness program, which provides small independent merchants with access to technology and a suite of resources that will enable them to provide secure, seamless customer experiences on par with larger e-commerce players, she explained.

“Without having ubiquitous consumer experience, you can still provide cyber tools and authentication tools to all types of businesses; we do that now but, with the standard, it’s the whole package,” Turner said. “That’s what really is going to change behavior for consumers and provide the uplift you want in the market, with lower fraud, higher approval rates, better consumer experiences and less shopping cart abandonment. The whole package is what’s going to bring this together for the small independent merchants.”

David True, partner at Paygility Advisors, said the offering would be appealing to small merchants looking to decrease their dependence on big e-commerce players like Amazon. What Mastercard essentially is allowing them to do is “beef-up” their own sites quickly, without too much heavy lifting or investment, he explained.

Mastercard’s announcement comes the same week as PayPal‘s rollout of its PayPal Commerce Platform, offering fast and secure marketplace payments capabilities that are supported by PayPal’s technology infrastructure and assistance for merchants in meeting local compliance requirements, as well as access to AI-powered risk and fraud tools, a mobile point-of-sale system, business financing and the ability to offer consumer credit for purchases. It’s a competitive offering with PayPal One Touch and Amazon Pay.

Also see: PayPal enhances payments capabilities for e-commerce marketplaces

Turner said merchants in Mastercard’s program will gain access to tokenization and NuData, a Mastercard-owned artificial intelligence and machine learning tool, for both streamlined guest checkout sales and their card-on-file business. NuData works with retailers to anticipate and prevent fraud by monitoring website traffic changes, analyzing sudden changes in browser type, surfing speed and time spent on web pages, thereby allowing businesses to monitor further or halt access. In fact, during the 2018 holiday season, NuData identified more than 1 billion irregular digital activities and stopped 99% of the fraudulent activity, saving businesses more than $500 million, she claimed.

The Mastercard Digital Wellness program also includes a cyber readiness initiative through which businesses can educate their workforce on phishing, authentication, patching and other issues. Additional resources will be introduced over time, such as providing business owners guidance on how to manage and grow their business, Turner said. Merchants can opt-in for features of their choosing.

In addition, Mastercard is working with payment processors and payment platforms such as Worldpay, Square, Adyen and Stripe in order to scale up its program quickly and spur adoption by businesses and consumers, Turner noted.

“It’s not one competing against the other,” True said, adding that the collaboration is all about volume. “Working with those guys means that they’re looking at some of the biggest processing platforms out there, presumably to make the integration easier, so that existing small merchants, whoever they’re using for their website, can tag this on very easily.”

Asked whether consumers now expect one-click capabilities, Turner replied, “I don’t know if consumers care or know if it’s one-click or not, but I think they do expect checkouts to have as little friction as possible and to feel good about the security.”