Fraud

Stopping fraud in its tracks

Fraudsters are constantly attacking the payments system. From individual retailers or businesses skimming cards in a shop – right through to large-scale attempts to compromise processor data.

To tackle the growing threat our fraud professionals constantly examine card data in order to ‘join the dots’ and spot where a problem or fraud pattern exists. If, for example, we see cards have all been used in one location, we can warn our members. For large-scale fraudulent activity, we use forensic analysis to identify and shut down the root cause behind it.

Our task is huge, but we are winning. In fact, the level of fraud on Visa Europe’s cards in 2009 right across Europe remained at less than 6 cents for every €100 spent.

Stopping the fraudster in real time

In 2010, we introduced Visa Europe Real Time Scoring. This tool should improve fraud detection rates by an average of 15%.It uses neural network and predictive technologies to identify suspicious transactions passing through the system.  Each transaction is then given a risk score which reaches the card issuer in milliseconds.

Visa Europe works closely with both law enforcement agencies and the European Commission. They have put together a Fraud Prevention Action Plan (FPAP) which focuses on payment products and systems security, including:

• Co-operation between public authorities and the private sector.
• Integrating new member states into the EU fraud prevention framework.
• Achieving closer ties with neighbouring countries to Europe.

Visa are also involved in the fraud prevention expert group, the steering group and various subgroups – all sharing information and promoting best practice, especially at cross-border level.