Fast, fraudulent, and hard to fight: why real-time scams need real-time defences

The era of instant payments is here: real-time payments (RTPs) are expected to hit 34 billion transactions across Europe by 2027, growing at a 21% CAGR¹. But as money moves faster, so does the risk – and in many cases, the systems designed to stop fraud are struggling to keep up.

Scams that once took days can now unfold in seconds. RTP fraud is up to ten times higher than traditional methods², and more than half of all payment fraud in Europe now stems from account-to-account (A2A) transactions³.

At Visa’s recent summit in Stockholm – part of a wider series of events across Europe – fraud experts, payment leaders, and financial institutions tackled the same urgent question: how do we stop scams that move as fast as the payments themselves? Let’s unpack what they found out...

Fraud tactics are changing

Fraudsters have changed their approach: it’s now often the customer being manipulated, not just the systems being breached.

As Daniel Shonfeld, VP of Sales, EMEA at Featurespace explained, “the real-time payment trends we see across the UK and Europe closely align with societal changes such as the cost of living, economic uncertainty and misinformation, preying on individuals’ fears, isolating them and manipulating them into becoming a victim.”

Today’s scam doesn’t always force entry. It knocks, and the victim opens the door. As Antti Alestalo of OP Bank describes, “the scammer usually calls the victim pretending to be an investment advisor… They use a fake site and remote access tools to show false graphs and data, making the scam look entirely legitimate.”

Even worse, the money doesn’t linger. Criminals are moving stolen funds across legitimate crypto platforms, mule accounts, and payment providers, disappearing the money almost instantly.

AI’s Growing Role in Fighting Fraud

“With banks facing ever-evolving challenges in keeping their customers’ money safe from fraud, tools such as AI have enabled them to scale their defences in the same way it has powered criminals to scale their attacks”, Shonfeld explains. “What AI has enabled the financial industry to do is to perform analysis on huge amounts of data in real time and help to detect and prevent new attacks at scale, providing the context needed to determine if a transaction is genuine or not.”

However, fraudsters operate across systems, borders, and providers, but protection models are often constrained by them. So while fraud protections are advancing, they still hit a wall if signals are fragmented across payment types or providers. Many institutions operate in silos, where one team can’t see what another is flagging – and that’s exactly what fraudsters are counting on.

As Alestalo puts it, “to combat fraud more effectively, banks should deploy advanced generative AI models focused on transaction and physical behaviour patterns.”

Collaboration is our strongest defence

Cross-industry collaboration is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s essential. As Shonfeld puts it: “The UK and Europe have had RTP for many years, with new scams often originating in these regions before migrating across the globe. Being able to share knowledge and experience across the industry is key in being able to better protect people around the world.”

“By identifying key behavioural indicators, without needing to share specific data, financial institutions can gain the benefits of a global, holistic customer view, while remaining fully compliant with data privacy regulations that have been put in place to protect their customers.” Shonfeld explains.

The upcoming PSD3/PSR could help unlock greater data sharing between banks, authorities, and payment networks – a crucial step in detecting and stopping fraud faster. As Alestalo notes, “we’re hopeful PSD3 will allow more tools to be used for sharing fraud information between institutions and relevant authorities.”

But regulation alone won’t solve it. What we need is an ecosystem that collaborates in real time.

The way forward: shared insight, shared protection

The future of fraud prevention won’t be won by the smartest tool – but by the smartest network. At Visa, we believe that collaboration between networks, issuers, acquirers, regulators, and beyond is the foundation for protecting real-time payments.

Our role? To connect the ecosystem – using our scale, risk solutions, and data intelligence to help financial institutions stay one step ahead.

Part of this includes the recent acquisition of Featurespace, a key player in adaptive fraud detection. Featurespace’s Adaptive Real-time Individual Change-identification (ARIC™) Risk Hub applies advanced machine learning to recognise not just fraud patterns, but real customer behaviour.

“At Featurespace, we are truly AI-native, deploying leading machine learning to empower our customers to enhance their defences against fraud. In the fast-paced world of fraud advancement, real-time payment protection needs consumer context to remain effective by distinguishing good from bad transactions.” says Shonfeld.

By integrating Featurespace’s AI-driven approach with Visa’s global network intelligence, financial institutions gain a powerful, adaptive fraud prevention framework – one that can help stops fraud before it can happens while maintaining a smooth experience for legitimate customers.

“Having a holistic customer view enables us to profile and learn individual behaviour and identify discrepancies. And with Visa, we can bring the purpose, integrity and innovation of our platform to more financial institutions and help stop more people from becoming victims of financial crime.” said Schonfeld.

Tareq Muhmood, Head of Value-Added Services, Europe at Visa, added: "We are thrilled to be integrating ARIC Risk Hub into our offer to businesses and financial institutions. We have been using AI for over 30 years to fight fraud, and now by integrating behavioural data with ARIC’s cutting-edge technology we will further help our clients to stay ahead of emerging threats.”

In a world of fast fraud, it’s the connected minds – and the intelligent systems that link them – that change the game.

To learn more about how Visa and Featurespace are changing the game for account-to-account payments fraud prevention, download our infographic here.