MasterCard today announced that it has become the first payment network to provide tokenization services to private label (store-branded) credit card issuers, enabling merchants to take advantage of the latest digital payment innovations.

BJ's Wholesale Club, Kohl's and JCPenney will be among the first retailers to bring mobile payments to their private label cardholders later this year, according to a press release. All three retailers now are involved with forthcoming Apple Pay updates this fall. 

MasterCard also has announced partnerships with some of the largest private label credit card issuers in the U.S., including Synchrony Financial and Citi Retail Services, to enable consumers to use their eligible credit cards within participating mobile payment and digital wallet services.

Tokenization support for private label issuers is made possible through the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service, which enables a connected device to be securely used for everyday shopping and payments, according to the announcement. MDES supports NFC payments with a mobile device at a physical point of sale, as well as from within a mobile app. Transactions are secured using industry-standard EMV cryptography and take full advantage of the most secure payments technology in the world, according to MasterCard. 

"Thanks to our ongoing innovation and strategic partnerships, we are helping shape the future of how private label credit cards work in whichever digital wallet customers choose," said Margaret Keane, president and CEO of Synchrony Financial. "It was recently announced that our retail partner, JCPenney, will be among the first to offer its private label credit cardholders the ability to check out with Apple Pay later this year. We are committed to working with our retail partners, MasterCard, and key payments industry players to preserve the benefits of our private label credit cards and patented Dual Cards in third-party digital wallets."

MasterCard said that since the announcement of MDES in 2013, millions of MasterCard accounts have been tokenized for use in popular digital wallet services. MDES currently provides tokenization services for credit, debit, co-branded, prepaid and small business cards, with private label tokenization beginning in the third quarter of this year.