Visa Launches AI-Powered Real-Time Fraud Detection Service in UK

Visa has launched an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered real-time fraud detection service in the United Kingdom, aiming to prevent account-to-account (A2A) fraud.

The company is making this “Visa Protect for A2A Payments” service available to all banks in the U.K. after a pilot program in which it found an additional 54% of fraud beyond that identified by banks’ fraud prevention systems, Visa said in a Thursday (May 30) press release emailed to PYMNTS.

“The U.K. has one of the most developed payment systems in the world, but also sees some of the highest levels of account-to-account fraud,” Mandy Lamb, managing director of Visa UK & Ireland, said in the release. “Once fraud happens, the money is in the hands of the criminals, so fraud prevention must be our collective goal, in the financial services industry and beyond.”

The pilot program of this new service was conducted in partnership with Pay.UK, the organization that runs the U.K.’s retail payment operations, according to the release.

During the pilot, Visa used its AI technologies to analyze billions of U.K. retail bank transactions covering a 12-month period and identify fraudulent transactions that had already been made, the release said.

Based on the results of the pilot program, “Visa Protect for A2A Payments” could potentially save over £330 million (about $419 million) from A2A fraud in the U.K. by helping to intercept suspected fraudulent transactions before the money leaves the victim’s bank account, per the release.

“The positive results from this pilot demonstrate the importance of innovation and cross-industry collaboration in developing effective solutions to stay ahead of fraudsters and protect people in the ever-changing payments landscape,” Kate Frankish, chief business development officer and anti-fraud lead at Pay.UK, said in the release.

Fraud losses in the U.K. amounted to £1.2 billion (about $1.5 billion) in 2023, according to UK Finance.

Unauthorized fraud losses across payment cards, remote banking and checks totaled £708.7 million (about $899.5 million) that year, while authorized push payment (APP) fraud losses amounted to £459.7 million (about $583.5 million).

The total was down 4% from 2022, an improvement UK Finance attributed to financial services industry initiatives designed to protect consumers and prevent fraud.