What's Ahead

What's ahead for banking in 2025, according to a Mastercard executive

Trust and transparency are at the core of banking and payments
By
John Levitsky
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
John Levitsky, co-president, U.S., Mastercard.
John Levitsky, co-president, U.S., Mastercard.
Photo: Mastercard

John Levitsky is co-president, U.S., Mastercard (MA).

Whether it’s opening a bank account, shopping, collaborating with colleagues, or connecting with friends, our lives are increasingly online. The digital economy has opened a world of opportunity, creating an environment where the full ecosystem — people, banks, and financial institutions, merchants, businesses, and governments — can seamlessly interact. However, its success hinges on a foundational principle: trust. Without it, the ecosystem falters.

Trust and transparency will define the future of banking and payments, serving as the cornerstones of a healthy digital economy that works for everyone. Safeguarding these principles is not optional — it’s a strategic imperative.

Today’s fraud landscape

Advances in digitization, computing power, and AI have made fraud more scalable and sophisticated. Fraudsters have their PhDs and are seizing on this heightened level of interconnectivity. The severity of cyberattacks is also increasing, on track to cause $10.5 trillion a year in damage by 2025, a 300% increase from 2015 levels, according to

McKinsey. As Mastercard, we’re seeing many different forms of fraud and data breaches, including:

  • Account takeovers and identity fraud: When hackers gain access to bank accounts with malicious intent, such as draining consumers’ funds or accessing their personal information like their address or Social Security number. American adults lost a total of $43 billion to identity fraud in 2023.
  • Improper cyber hygiene: Roughly 80% of confirmed data breaches are related to weak or stolen passwords.
  • Smaller institutions at risk: Limited cybersecurity resources leave many smaller financial institutions and small businesses vulnerable to attacks by bad actors.
  • First-party misuse or “friendly” fraud: It can be difficult for banks and merchants to discern legitimate transactions when cardholders challenge them. Data can help solve the issue. Mastercard’s First-Party Trust program helps banks and merchants prove genuine purchases. Developed in collaboration with industry trade groups, the program leverages enhanced transaction insights, AI, and risk modeling to prevent flawed disputes.

What’s clear: We’ve reached a seminal moment in the value of trust as bad actors proliferate and the rate of innovation transforms how we conduct commerce.

Prediction 1: Ethical AI will drive transformation

Generative AI has shifted from a niche tool for engineers to a transformative economic force, with vast potential for improving how banks operate: More than half (57%) of U.S. banking executives are already using it to improve productivity in areas such as predictive risk modeling.

In 2025, we’ll continue to see financial institutions tap into the power of generative AI to personalize services for their customers and employees. For instance, it can help monitor for fraud by analyzing customer interactions and it can provide personalized financial advice and product recommendations. We may also see generative AI used to improve the lending process for underwriters through faster, more accurate, and efficient decision-making.

Regardless, we’ve only just scratched the surface of what generative AI can do in the financial services world, and any exploration must be built on trust. Mastercard draws on two decades of AI expertise and has always believed that the only AI is responsible AI. We harness it to protect more than 143 billion transactions every year, preventing cybercriminals from stealing billions of dollars by detecting fraudulent activity and ensuring people are who they say they are. We believe that data protection and privacy are fundamental human rights, and we have a robust AI governance process that protects against misuse.

Prediction 2: Biometrics will future-proof authentication

Biometric technology is transforming digital interactions, quickly becoming a powerful authentication tool to confirm customers’ identity and secure their data through their unique face or fingerprint. Today, billions of people use biometrics to unlock their devices. Biometrics can reduce operational costs for financial institutions by streamlining customer touchpoints — account logins, account changes, payments and more — removing the friction and vulnerability of passwords and multi-factor authentication. Coupled with innovations such as open banking, biometrics can enhance and protect processes like opening a bank account by verifying the authenticity of both the user and the device while reducing manual touchpoints, improving trust and leading to greater customer loyalty and engagement.

In 2025, we’ll continue to see an uptick in financial institutions leveraging biometric authentication capabilities and integrating them across their apps and platforms. This includes a rise in payments passkeys that use on-device biometrics to seamlessly validate across devices and websites, ensuring peace of mind in every interaction. By 2030, Mastercard aims to eliminate the need for manual card entry and one-time or static passwords by combining tokenization to protect sensitive, personal, and payment data with biometric authentication for secure, seamless checkout.

Prediction 3: Tokenization will power a new economy

Tokenization — securing payment credentials by replacing them with unique, reusable tokens — is transforming digital payments: About one in four Mastercard transactions globally are tokenized, accelerating 50% year-over-year. Tokens were designed to be universal and interoperable — working seamlessly across issuers and merchants to bring enhanced security and trust to exchanges of value. In 2025, we’ll continue to see financial institutions leverage tokenization to enhance security, privacy, and trust, reducing the security burden on banks, payment service providers, and merchants alike — and in turn boosting confidence in the digital economy.

Trust is not easy to create and maintain, but it’s imperative that financial institutions lean into data, technology, and partnerships to stay ahead of the curve and protect every single online interaction.