With the rising incidence of financial fraud, global digital services provider Mastercard has partnered with Feedzai, an artificial intelligence (AI) solution provider in financial crime prevention, to make it easier for more banks to identify and stop scams, protecting consumers and businesses globally.

As payment solutions continue to evolve, fraudsters are increasingly using AI to scam consumers. According to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, “Scammers have siphoned away over $1.03 trillion globally in just the past year—a figure that rivals the GDP of some nations. Yet amid the numbers…with signs of increased scam awareness and resistance amongst consumers.”

In fact, more than 50 per cent of Mastercard users have reported encountering a scam in the last week. In countries like Brazil, Hong Kong and South Korea, scams have become a daily occurrence.

As such, Mastercard has embarked on investing in cutting-edge technology and strengthening partnerships to help prevent scams at each stage of the lifecycle – from account opening – to the point the transaction is made. Its leveraging of Feedzai’s globally available, advanced fraud platform will therefore help protect consumers and financial institutions in over 90 countries, as both companies will expedite the deployment of Mastercard’s Consumer Fraud Risk (CFR) solution to customers across many key markets globally.

In account-to-account payments, CFR provides both the sending and the receiving financial institution with intelligence to help detect and prevent scams in real-time.

“With more than half the world’s population affected, the scale of scam fraud is not only having a devastating impact on consumers but also surpassing the GDP of many individual economies,” said Johan Gerber, executive vice-president and head of Security Solutions at Mastercard.

“Together with Feedzai’s global platform, we will scale our first-of-its-kind scams solution to more markets, helping more financial institutions combat financial crime faster than before,” he added,

Leading financial institutions are already using Feedzai’s AI-native Financial Crime Prevention Platform to protect over a billion consumers globally, and more than US$8 trillion in transactions every year.

“We are excited to expand our partnership with Mastercard to address escalating financial crime threats,” said Nuno Sebastiao, CEO of Feedzai.

“The exponential growth in scams underscores the urgency for financial institutions to adopt AI-based, real-time solutions. We’re excited to be working together with Mastercard to help bring the proven value of its CFR score to new markets for the first time.”

Feedzai’s platform analyses every digital transaction — from card purchases to real-time transfers — for multiple risk signals in real-time. By integrating device intelligence, network data, and behavioural biometrics, Feedzai AI identifies suspicious activity as it’s happening so fraud can be stopped in real-time before any money is lost.

“The global epidemic of fraud and scams has created a pressing need for innovative technology solutions. In the face of this rapidly rising threat, financial institutions should consider third-party data as an essential part of their strategy for fraud defence,” said Julie Conroy, chief insights officer, Datos Insights.  

“By building on Mastercard’s proven CFR score and extending it globally, this partnership delivers a powerful combination – Mastercard’s global data expertise and Feedzai’s purpose-built risk scoring capabilities,” Conroy added.