Mastercard Targets ‘Fast Fraud’ With A2A Protect Launch

Mastercard has launched a service designed to protect account-to-account (A2A) payments against fraud.

Mastercard A2A Protect, announced Monday and launching first in the U.K., is designed to offer fraud prevention technology and a “new clear” dispute resolution framework.

“With Fast A2A comes fast fraud, and we owe it to consumers to have their back. Mastercard A2A Protect delivers meaningful benefits to every participant in a transaction,” Jorn Lambert, chief product officer at Mastercard, said in a news release.

“It lowers operational costs for financial institutions through standardized real-time fraud insights and streamlined dispute resolution, and all participants benefit from quicker and more predictable outcomes. Most importantly, consumers can feel reassured they have the appropriate protection when making account-to-account payments.”

The release notes that 15 banks that represent 90% of the A2A payments in the U.K. already use Mastercard’s real-time transaction scoring service Consumer Fraud Risk (CFR). The company says this service has played an important role in reducing authorized push payment (APP) fraud cases by 20% last year.

According to the release, A2A Protect is launching with a focus on “the most acute needs” such as APP fraud, offering a mix of preventative measures, consumer protections and fund-recovery process.

The company adds that 592 million pounds ($794 million) were lost in the U.K. last year to A2A fraud, per data from U.K. Finance. The U.K.’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has also taken measures to target fraud, creating a 50:50 liability model for APP fraud.

“Mastercard A2A Protect adds to that with consistent expectations for consumer protections,” the company added.

PYMNTS explored Mastercard’s fraud prevention efforts earlier this year in a conversation with Johan Gerber, the company’s executive vice president and head of security solutions.

“The world is expanding so rapidly from a digital point of view,” Gerber said. “There is this massive opportunity in the digitization of economies and what that could mean for financial inclusion by bringing more and more people into the digital economy.”

“But we can only do so if we make sure your first interaction on a digital platform is not one where you get abused or scammed,” he added. “That first experience can’t be a bad one. It has to be good and secure.”

The company also recently expanded its First Party Trust program to tackle “friendly” fraud. Otherwise known as first-party fraud, this term refers to genuine transactions that are challenged by cardholders, whether deliberately or by mistake.

As PYMNTS has written, this type of fraud is not malicious, though the increase of shoppers disputing legitimate transactions is still a major financial threat to merchants, particularly small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).