Visa announces plans to introduce new technology to reduce fraud

With more consumers concerned about the risks of online fraud, companies have been focused on how they can boost their protections – and Visa is the latest to introduce new measures to reduce fraudulent transactions. 

The company has announced new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven initiatives to oversee the more than 200 billion transactions it processes annually. Using these new technologies, Visa now analyses 500 data elements in each transaction to identify and prevent fraud in real-time.

The card fraud forecast for 2024 currently stands at $35.8 billion, which equates to 6.5 cents per $100 spent on cards. The number is also twice as high as it was in 2014. However, the revenue lost to fraud globally has decreased from 3.6% in 2022 to 29.% in 2023. 

While the new system isn’t flawless at the moment, Visa reports that it currently detects 60% of real-time payment fraud and scams that were previously missed by financial institutions. And one big advancement in this effort is the use of “data tokens.”

Similar to ApplePay and GooglePay, these tokens replace sensitive card information (such as card numbers and expiration dates) with unique, randomly generated codes. These tokens are used for payment processing instead of actual card details, greatly reducing the likelihood that scammers can access personal or bank account information.

Meanwhile, Android users recently gained enhanced protection against fraud and surveillance, thanks to new security features introduced at Google’s I/O 2024. Given the high frequency of phishing attempts via text messages and alerts, Google’s focus on Android security is timely. 

One major update is the hiding of one-time passwords (OTPs) from notifications, a common method used by malicious actors to steal OTPs for account logins and financial transactions. 

Additionally, Android 13’s restricted settings have been expanded, requiring explicit user approval to enable sensitive permissions when installing apps from unverified sources. This aims to prevent users from inadvertently granting dangerous permissions to fraudulent apps.