Mastercard Inc. is rolling out a program to boost transactions on Amazon, as customers in 12 countries across the Americas, Europe and the Middle East will now have their stored credit or debit card credentials tokenized. 

The tokenization plan means that each individual physical card number will be replaced by a single use token when requested by the merchant. The change is in response to the massive increases in e-commerce purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen an increased amount of fraudulent activity due to shifting payment patterns. 

"The behavioral shift that we are seeing has accelerated in recent months, but it's a product of our work to create the infrastructure and partner ecosystem for the digitally savvy consumer and forward thinking businesses like Amazon," Jorn Lambert, executive vice president, digital solutions at Mastercard, said in a company release. 

The technology, called the Mastercard Digital Enablement Service, is live with more than 2,600 issuers and 1,200 token requestors around the world. The 12 countries include the U.S., Canada, U.K., Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

By using tokenization, consumers do not need to re-enter card information when their physical cards are renewed after expiration, but the payment information is automatically updated.