Visa Prevents Approximately $25 Billion in Fraud Using Artificial Intelligence

Since pioneering AI in payments, continuous evolution of the technology in Visa Advanced Authorization helps drive commerce and consumer confidence

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) today announced new analysis showing Visa Advanced Authorization (VAA) using artificial intelligence (AI) helped financial institutions prevent an estimated $25 billion in annual fraud—making the global payment ecosystem safer for retailers and consumers.i VAA is a comprehensive risk management tool that monitors and evaluates transaction authorizations on the Visa global payment network, VisaNet, in real time to help financial institutions promptly identify and respond to emerging fraud patterns and trends. Visa processed more than 127 billion transactions between merchants and financial institutions on VisaNet last year, and employed AI to analyze 100 percent of the transactions—each in about one millisecond—so financial institutions can approve legitimate purchases while quickly identifying and preventing fraudulent transactions.

“One of the toughest challenges in payments is separating good transactions made by account holders from bad ones attempted by fraudsters without adding friction to the process,” said Melissa McSherry, senior vice president and global head of Data, Risk and Identity Products and Solutions, Visa. “Visa was the first payment network to apply neural network-based AI in 1993 to analyze the riskiness of transactions in real time, and the impact on fraud was immediate. By striking the right balance between human expertise and technology innovation, we continue to evolve our capabilities as new AI breakthroughs expand the realm of what’s possible.”

For financial institutions, friction in the payment process can lead to the abandonment of a payment card. A study by Javelin Strategy & Research revealed more than half of cardholders affected by false declines (51 percent) used a secondary payment card to complete the purchase at the same merchant, which can push a competitor’s card to the top of wallet.ii However, removing friction cannot come at the expense of identifying and preventing fraud. As a survey by the National Retail Federation and Forrester discovered, the top payment-related challenge faced by retailers is fraud, cited by 55 percent of those surveyed.

Visa Advanced Authorization is a layer of fraud prevention that can help drive down risk and fraud for financial institutions and retailers, and help reduce friction due to false declines for payment account holders. More than 8,000 financial institutions in 129 countries use Visa Advanced Authorization.

Preventing fraud near the speed of light

Visa pioneered using neural networks modeled after the human brain to power its AI platform to identify possible fraud. This delivers faster and deeper insights through previously unknown correlations. Delivered through Visa Advanced Authorization, retailers and financial institutions benefit from:
• Machine Learning models used for real-time examination of each transaction for indicators of fraud—looking at activities, patterns and more than 500 risk attributes—all in about one millisecond.
• Risk scoring, which Visa shares with the account holder’s financial institution, where the decision is made to either approve or decline the transaction, or flag the transactions for follow up with the account holder.
• The ability to identify good transactions even when made by new or infrequent shoppers, reducing the likelihood of false declines.
• Real-time authorization using integrated, global predictive analytics to identify and prevent fraud.
Visa has kept global fraud rates at historic lows—less than 0.1 percent—through a multi-layered approach of investing in human intelligence and technology like A.I.; empowering consumers and clients with tools, resources and control to manage risk; and setting governance processes to help businesses and regulators stay nimble.iv
“Consumers identified Visa as the most trusted company to provide financial services or payments among all payment networks and we believe it is due to Visa’s unrelenting focus on eliminating fraud and protecting the payment ecosystem,” said McSherry.v

Additional Risk Solutions Using AI
Visa champions security every day to protect the payment ecosystem and offers a portfolio of risk products and services that can help consumers, merchants and financial institutions prevent fraud. This includes Visa Risk Manager (VRM), Visa Consumer Authentication Services (VCAS) and CyberSource Decision Manager (DM), among others. For more information about Visa’s Risk solution portfolio, visit Visa Security.

Additional Resources

About Visa Inc.

Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is the world’s leader in digital payments. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, reliable and secure payment network – enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. Our advanced global processing network, VisaNet, provides secure and reliable payments around the world, and is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second. The company’s relentless focus on innovation is a catalyst for the rapid growth of digital commerce on any device for everyone, everywhere. As the world moves from analog to digital, Visa is applying our brand, products, people, network and scale to reshape the future of commerce. For more information, visit About Visa,visa.com/blog and @VisaNews.

i For the 12 months ended April 30, 2019.

ii “Addressing the Threat of False Positive Declines” by Kyle Marchini and Al Pascual, Javelin Strategy & Research, October 17, 2018.

iii “The State of Retail Payments Report – Outlook for 2019” by Brendan Miller, principal analyst, Forrester, November 2018.

iv Visa Global Fraud Data, Visa Inc., April 2019.

v “Omnichannel and Branch: The Current U.S. Consumer Banking Environment,” by Peter Reville, Director of Primary Data, Mercator Advisory Group, March 2019.

Source: Visa Inc.

Verify by Visa Rebrands to Visa Secure

VerifiedbyVisa is designed to make online purchases with your Visa credit card even more secure. Visa announced via the merchant business news digest March 28, 2019 the Verified by Visa (VbV) program name will be rebranded to Visa Secure. Visa Secure uses 3DS, the industry-wide e-commerce authentication standard.

Existing VbV marks will be replaced with a Visa Secure badge across consumer-facing merchant and issuer channels, while all 3DS authentication screens will simply display the Visa logo.

verified by visa
Old Verified by Visa logo
Visa Secure logo
New Visa Secure logo

Visa developed the 3-D Secure standard—currently branded for Visa cardholders as Verified by Visa— to provide merchants and issuers a way to authenticate the cardholder for card-not-present payments.

Starting 1 October 2019, merchants must use the new badge and messaging whenever EMV 3DS technology is used.

Visa Stored Credential Mandate Overview

How can merchants get compliant with the Visa Stored Credential Transaction framework and mandates effective October 14, 2017? Most companies are under the false impression that their acquirer and or payment gateway manages compliance. Not true. While some technical aspects are managed by the payment gateway, the merchant also has to make some changes for compliance.

What is a Stored Credential? A stored credential is information (including, but not limited to, an account number or payment token) that is stored to process future purchases for a cardholder.

What is the Visa Stored Credential framework and mandate? It outlines the rules related to storing and using stored credentials. Since it’s 15 pages long, I’ll only highlight a few important items here.

  • Merchant initiated or customer initiated transactions? Make sure your payment gateway is sending the correct code. For example, an ecommerce store checkout would be customer initiated. A recurring billing transaction is merchant initiated.
  • Get customer consent for terms and conditions of storing and using stored card.
  • Advise how the cardholder will be notified of any changes to the consent agreement.
  • For a transaction using a stored credential initiated by the cardholder, the merchant or its agent must validate the cardholder’s identity before processing. The only valid methods are 3-D Secure Verified by Visa and the security code.
  • Receipt must be provided for the initial cardholder validation ($0 dollar transaction or actual amount.)
  • All stored credential transactions must be submitted with a value of “10” in the POS Entry Mode Code field; this is for both newly stored cards and all prior transactions using stored credential. This is managed by the payment gateway. (Confirm your gateway is doing this.)

What about the other card brands? Mastercard rolled out their version in June 2018. If you comply with the Visa mandate, you’ll be in compliance with any others at this time.

What if I don’t comply?

  • You’ll be non-compliant with Visa’s rules and risk Non Compliance Assessments
  • No benefit from expected improved authorization rate
  • Increased customer complaints and poor cardholder experience
  • Cannot use Real Time Visa Account Updater service
  • Risk issuer generated chargebacks for all transactions using the stored credential within the allowable chargeback timeframe under reason code 72, invalid authorization. A valid authorization is needed to qualify for the lowest interchange rates.

What are the benefits of compliance? Increased authorizations, better customer experience, more profits.

See Improving Authorization Management for Transactions with Stored Credentials https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/support-legal/documents/stored-credential-transaction-framework-vbs-10-may-17.pdf . Are you going to manage documenting everything or are you going to use technology to help you manage it?

partial stored credit card authorizationform

Partial CenPOS PCI Compliant stored credential authorization form.

Verify if you have a system to manage authorization validity. What the heck does that mean? Many companies have complex needs including pre-authorizations, incremental authorizations, delayed shipping etc. While you may get issuer approvals, that doesn’t mean the authorization is valid. Are you compliant now? Look at your merchant statement ‘pending interchange fees. If you see  EIRF or STD or misuse of authorization fee, there’s a problem.

Replace paper credit card authorization forms, and any digital form that you can decrypt and view sensitive card data. Offer your customers a way to self-manage their own wallet with either a hosted online pay page or Electronic Bill Presentment & Payment.

New to online payments? See Visa best practices to prevent brute force attacks. https://usa.visa.com/support/merchant/library/visa-merchant-business-news-digest.html. CenPOS includes recaptcha and client managed velocity and other rules as part of a layered security approach.

Register for 3-D Secure, including Verified by Visa, with your acquirer. Don’t do this until you know which payment gateway will be used and get their instructions if applicable.

interchange rate qualification

The same transaction can process at different rates as shown above, depending on which rules you follow. CenPOS Smart Rate Selector automates compliance to qualify transactions at the lowest rate possible. Which rates are on your merchant statement now?

Where can I buy CenPOS or learn more? You’ve already found one of the top salespeople, Christine Speedy. All agreements are direct with CenPOS, no middle man.

Resources and documentation https://3dmerchant.com/blog/merchant-bulletins-downloads – bookmark it!.  Join Christine Speedy’s email list.

DISCLAIMER: condensed and incomplete information! Information may be quickly outdated.

With the fast pace of changing rules, companies need a technology partner to automate compliance. Did you know?

  • CenPOS has a suite of solutions for companies just like yours, solving common problems and increasing profits virtually overnight.
  • For those not ready to give up paper, CenPOS creates a printable PCI Compliant credit card authorization form for every stored card.
  • CenPOS has ERP, ecommerce shopping cart, accounting and other plug-in modules available for quick and easy implementation.
  • I’ve been selling for CenPOS since day 1. Though I have other payment gateways available in my arsenal, nothing else compares.

Call Christine Speedy for global sales. 954-942-0483, 9-5 ET, CenPOS authorized reseller based out of South Florida and NY. CenPOS is an integrated commerce technology platform driving innovative, omnichannel solutions tailored to meet a merchant’s market needs. Providing a single point of integration, the CenPOS platform combines payment, commerce and value-added functionality enabling merchants to transform their commerce experience, eliminate the need to manage complex integrations, reduce the burden of accepting payments and create deeper customer relationships.