Visa strengthens fraud-prevention measures

CREDIT card company Visa blocked US$30 billion in fraud in the first six months of 2023.

Visa’s senior director of business development Jorge Salum gave the figure as he highlighted the work the company was doing to combat fraud while driving a secure cashless ecosystem in Trinidad and Tobago.

In a media release, Salum said cashless payments are experiencing promising growth as a result of the increasing adoption of digital technologies.

He said, however, this is fuelling a worldwide shift in crime as cyber criminals are also becoming increasingly sophisticated and capitalising on vulnerabilities.

“Developing countries like Trinidad and Tobago are also facing a significant rise of phishing schemes, attacks targeting e-commerce, free-gift scams and ransomware,” added Salum.

Salum said Trinidad and Tobago has been making tremendous strides in credit-card security with the introduction of contactless technology, the transition to a more secure e-commerce authentication protocol and advanced authorisation solutions.

However, he said more can still be done to protect transactions.

“This includes the implementation of tokens, a security technology that replaces sensitive account information with a unique digital identifier.”

He added, “Merchants should consider incorporating a transactional risk scoring tool, like CyberSource’s Decision Manager, which leverages AI technology to help merchants distinguish between fraudulent and legitimate payments transactions.”

Salum said Visa is securing transactions “behind the scenes” with more than 1,000 dedicated employees tasked with protecting its network from malware, and three cyber security centres on three different continents providing security monitoring and incident-response services.

“Over the last five years, Visa has invested $10 billion in technology to reduce fraud and increase network security. Additionally, over the last ten years we invested more than $3 billion on AI and data infrastructure.”

He said this investment has paid dividends with many customers shielded from the risk of a potential fraudulent transaction.

“We have also kept fraud at historic lows – only seven cents of fraud for every $100 transacted on our network – despite over two million daily attempts by fraudsters.”

Salum said the company will keep working with its partners, clients and stakeholders in Trinidad and Tobago to enable the secure, reliable and open movement of money for everyone “to drive a strong and thriving cashless commerce ecosystem.”