Visa’s new AI tool could save the UK over £330m a year on fraud and APP scams

In a groundbreaking pilot in partnership with Pay.UK, Visa has shown how leveraging the latest AI technology has the potential to drastically cut the £600m¹ lost annually to account-to-account scams and fraud over recent years in the UK. Results from the pilot announced in May 2024 reveal Visa identified 54% of fraudulent transactions which had already passed through the banks sophisticated fraud detection systems, suggesting Visa’s proven predictive AI technology is an important contribution to this growing space and could potentially help save £330m for UK consumers, businesses and the economy.

The pilot partnership between Visa and Pay.UK, which runs the UK’s retail payment operations, analysed billions of historic UK retail bank transactions (more than 50% of the annual UK account-to-account transactions), covering a 12-month period. Using advanced AI technologies, Visa successfully identified 54% of the fraudulent transactions that had previously been made.

Visa is now making this innovative real-time fraud detection service, Visa Protect for A2A Payments, available to all banks in the UK. This new technology will help intercept suspected fraudulent transactions in real-time, stopping scams before the money ever leaves the victim’s bank account.

Mandy Lamb, Managing Director Visa UK & Ireland, commented: “The UK has one of the most developed payment systems in the world, but also sees some of the highest levels of account-to-account fraud. Once fraud happens, the money is in the hands of the criminals so fraud prevention must be our collective goal, in the financial services industry and beyond.

“Visa has already reduced card payment fraud to historic lows, which we are very proud of. We are now bringing our AI capabilities to fight fraud and scams on account-to-account payments before they happen. We are really excited about working with our partners on this – keeping people and businesses safe from scammers is the biggest priority for Visa.”

Kate Frankish, Chief Business Development Officer and Anti-Fraud Lead at Pay.UK, commented: "The positive results from this pilot demonstrate the importance of innovation and cross-industry collaboration in developing effective solutions to stay ahead of fraudsters and protect people in the ever-changing payments landscape. In 2023, the UK saw 232,429 people falling victim to fraud. To reduce the scale of the crime that is happening we need a unified approach, and this future service will be a major step forward.”

Visa’s AI technology can analyse billions of transactions each year, generating a risk score indicating the likelihood of an account-to-account payment being part of fraudulent activity, helping banks protect their customers from falling victim to scammers. This all takes place within the blink of an eye, without any inconvenience to the speed and reliability of account-to-account payments.

This is an innovative detection system to provide advanced fraud and scam prevention services to the UK market.

This new AI-powered risk and fraud prevention service is part of Visa Protect, a broad suite of Visa value-added services that have grown to nearly 250 products, spanning five high-demand categories: Acceptance, Advisory, Issuing, Open Banking, and Risk and Identity.

This technology extends the successful track record that Visa has in credit and debit card fraud detection. The fraud rate on the Visa network globally continues to be among the lowest of all payments forms. This is a result of the investment of over £8 billion in technology over the last five years, including to reduce fraud and enhance network security. In 2023 alone Visa proactively prevented an estimated £30 billion in global fraud.