Visa prevents more than $700 million in fraud from disrupting Australian businesses

Sydney, February 12, 2024 - Visa, a world leader in digital payments, today announced that Visa Advanced Authorisation (VAA), its AI-based real-time payment fraud monitoring solution, has helped Australian financial institutions prevent $714 million[1] in fraud from disrupting Australian businesses in a year[2].

Emerging technologies like Generative AI have coincided with a notable growth of phishing schemes worldwide, with a marked increase in enumeration and ransomware attacks. Consumer demand for real-time payments have also created a prime opportunity for criminals to target account-based real-time fraud and social engineering scams. 

Visa's AI-based technology for risk and fraud management is the result of Visa pioneering the use of neural networks modelled on the human brain. Visa has several hundred AI models in production powering over 100 products and services, including Visa Advanced Authorisation, which can assess more than 500 risk attributes in approximately a millisecond to provide a real-time risk score of all transactions across VisaNet.

Joe Cunningham, Head of Risk for Visa Asia Pacific, said: "Preventing more than $700 million in fraud is an incredible testament to Visa's AI-powered security capabilities, yet is also a sobering reminder that security has to keep pace with innovation. As new ways to buy, sell and move money become popular with consumers and businesses, they become equally popular with fraudsters seeking to exploit any vulnerabilities in the system." 

"In particular, growth of real-time payments within Australia and across the wider Asia Pacific region presents a challenge for financial institutions to balance the convenience of near-instant payment with the need for security. We're finding that a little friction in the system to help assess risk can be a good thing." 

Visa is planning to bring its real-time payment fraud prevention service to Australia this year to help financial institutions analyse transactions in real time and provide rapid risk assessments.

Visa's real-time payment fraud prevention provides a multi-financial institution risk analysis feed uniquely built for instant payments. Deep learning artificial intelligence models are continuously enhanced to help financial institutions detect clusters of potential scam behaviours in real-time. APIs can be used to receive real-time transaction scores that can also be incorporated into existing risk and fraud management tools and processes.

About Visa

Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com. 

[1] $470m USD converted to AUD at rate of 1 USD = 1.52154 AUD (February 2024)

[2] 12 months ending March 2023, VisaNet (April 2022 - March 2023)