Visa’s enhanced A2A Protect to identify risky transfers

A2A Protect uses AI and transfer learning to analyse account-to-account transactions in real time

Banks can now use Visa’s enhanced A2A Protect service to identify risky transfers before funds leave customer accounts.

The update introduces a unified fraud score and marks Visa’s first in-market integration of Featurespace technology since acquiring the company.

A2A Protect uses AI and transfer learning to analyse account-to-account transactions in real time.

Banks can access global risk signals without waiting months for models to learn from their own transaction data or for other institutions to join a consortium.

They can also opt into network-level intelligence sharing to uncover scam hotspots and coordinated fraud activity that may be difficult to identify alone.

According to Visa, A2A Protect increased fraud detection by 75% during the first six months of deployment.

The service has also been shown to reduce more than 50% more fraud and cut unnecessary alerts by over 40%.

Each alert explains in plain language why a transaction was flagged.

Financial institutions can connect the service to their existing systems through a single application programming interface.

Fraudsters move fast across payment types, and financial institutions need risk insights just as quickly, without slowing down legitimate payment, said James Mirfin, Head of Risk and Security Solutions, Visa.

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, he said.

Visa cited projections that global account-to-account transactions will exceed 5.8 trillion by 2028, up 160% from 2024.

Visa is the world’s second-largest card payment organization (debit and credit cards combined), after being surpassed by China UnionPay in 2015, based on annual value of card payments transacted and number of issued cards.