Visa tech claims $1.5 billion fraud savings

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Visa has introduced technology which it believes could save an extra $1.5 billion (£968 million) in fraud losses.

A major update of the Visa Advanced Authentication, a real-time risk scoring technology, should improve overall fraud detection by around 29 per cent, the credit card giant said.

Detection of the riskiest transactions has been improved by a whopping 122 per cent, according to Visa.

In particular, the updates mean the detection systems can better identify “high-speed fraud” where criminals try to make numerous transactions in one fell swoop.

The enhancements come thanks to tweaks in fraud detection algorithms and better architecture to allow for wide-scale analysis of even highly complex transactions, all in real time, Visa said.

“The growth of digital currency has yielded vast benefits to consumers, merchants and entire economies around the world,” said Jim McCarthy, global product executive at Visa.

“Continued success requires that every time a consumer uses their Visa card, there's confidence that the purchase will be convenient and secure.”

The improvements should help reduce the fraud rate even further, which has been flat within the Visa system since historic lows were seen in recent months.

“Visa's continuous investments in the most sophisticated fraud-fighting systems have helped us to stay a step ahead of the criminals,” McCarthy added.

Visa determines risk scores by looking at a global view of fraud and spending patterns across the company’s entire network.

No doubt Visa will be hoping to prevent cyber criminals using the Zeus Trojan as well, which has caused havoc for financial institutions in recent times.

The prevalent Trojan was ranked third in our top 10 threats for 2010.

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