Visa, a global leader in payment technology, today unveiled its scam disruption practice focused on identifying and stopping complex scams as they emerge.

The new department, which sits under Visa Payment Ecosystem Risk and Control (PERC), saved victims $350 million (€335 million) across dozens of scams last year. This is in addition to the $40 billion (€39 billion) PERC blocked in attempted fraud on the Visa network last year.

“Visa has invested over $12 billion (€11 billion) in technology over the last five years, including to reduce fraud and enhance network security,” said Paul Fabara, Chief Risk and Client Services Officer at Visa. “At the same time, we have made a significant investment in our best weapon against scammers: our people. By combining our proprietary technology with the unique experiences and perspective our talent brings, we can more effectively identify and defeat even the savviest scammers.”

Visa Scam Disruption (VSD) aims to protect consumers, clients and businesses by leveraging Visa’s deep expertise, technologies, and partnerships:

• Scam Intelligence: VSD brings together a cross-disciplinary team that deploys mitigation strategies across various scams. In addition to hiring best-in-class engineers and artificial intelligence developers, Visa has focused recruitment efforts on non-traditional career paths in the fight against scams, looking to former law enforcement, military professionals and data visualization experts.
• Proactive Scam Investigations: VSD mitigates scams through a proactive investigation process that leverages multiple channels and methodologies to identify and address scams before they inflict devastating losses on consumers
• Scam Detection and Disruption: VSD leverages cutting-edge technology and extensive proprietary network-level data to analyze and thwart scams. Investigators use Generative AI tools which enable correlation and graphing analysis to identify complex relationships and parse through mass amounts of data to identify true positive and impactful scam activity. Visa then partners with financial institutions, law enforcement agencies, and third-party partners to disrupt the scam network infrastructure. By collaborating with key stakeholders, VSD aims to dismantle scam operations and prevent future fraudulent activities.

“As payments have evolved over the decades, so has the nature of fraud,” said Natalie Kelly, Chief Risk Officer, Visa Europe. “Scammers are leveraging advanced tools and technology, including AI, to organise and execute attacks at pace – but we remain several steps ahead in order to protect consumers here in Europe and around the world.”

Last year, the EU VSD team identified a widespread, complex scam that used social media adverts to target UK and European cardholders with fake products. The scam network used over 450 different URLS and merchant IDs to obtain almost 3 million card details, many of which were then compromised and used for further fraud. In total, over $130 million (€125 million) was stolen by the gang. However, as the VSD team was able to block fraud attempts on almost 75% of the compromised cards, Visa was able to prevent a further $431 million (€413 million) in fraud. Thanks to our enhanced VSD capabilities, the scam network was also completely dismantled.

“Fraud usually has no face, but a scam is personal,” said Michael Jabbara, SVP and Global Head of PERC at Visa. “These scams directly impact the lives of victims, sometimes with devastating effects. Visa also collaborates with intelligence partners, law enforcement, and industry working groups to ensure that not only do we shut these scammers down, but the other members of the ecosystem are also equipped to spot red flags on their own.”