Visa Debuts Enhanced Version of A2A Fraud Prevention Tool

Visa has introduced new tools to help banks prevent account-to-account (A2A) fraud.

The payments giant on Tuesday (Sept. 1) debuted an enhanced version of its A2A project, designed to offer real-time risk insights that help banks stop A2A fraud before funds leave customer accounts.

“Fraudsters move fast across payment types, and financial institutions need risk insights just as quickly, without slowing down legitimate payments,” James Mirfin, head of risk and security solutions at Visa, said in a news release. “A2A Protect combines Visa’s network expertise with Featurespace’s technology to deliver a powerful new layer of protection that helps financial institutions detect more fraud, earlier.”

According to the release, A2A Protect uses AI and transfer learning to provide immediate risk insights for account-to-account transactions, bypassing the need for local model training or consortium setup.

Banks that opt into network-level intelligence sharing can integrate ecosystem-wide signals to identify coordinated fraud and emerging scam hotspots, the release said.

“This gives financial institutions a more complete and early view of risk, helping to identify scams before authorization,” Visa added. “In fact, Visa A2A Protect has been shown to increase fraud detection by 75% in the first six months of deployment.”

Visa noted that the expanded A2A Protection comes as global A2A transactions are projected to exceed 5.8 trillion by 2028, a 160% increase from 2024.

Visa recently beefed up its fraud prevention capabilities with its $2.4 billion acquisition of Israeli company BioCatch.

As covered here last month, BioCatch employs AI and machine learning-based solutions “that analyze thousands of application, behavioral, device, and network signals like keystrokes and device handling to separate legitimate users from fraudsters.”

In other fraud-prevention news, the recent PYMNTS Intelligence/Plaid report “Payment Protection: Why Firms Still Aren’t Real-Time Ready” shows that while businesses want to transmit money in seconds, their defenses often require much more time to catch up.

Of the companies surveyed, 65% said they plan to bolster identity verification, while another 59% aim to expand secure bank connectivity and AI-based fraud detection.

“The findings show a clear gap between the tools firms own and the results they achieve. Nearly every firm surveyed has secure bank connectivity,” PYMNTS wrote. “Many also use real-time identity checks and several layers of fraud screening. Yet these tools often cover only selected payments or limited parts of the payment process. That leaves businesses exposed when funds move faster than their teams can review them.”