Mastercard expands first-of-its-kind AI technology to help banks protect more consumers from scams in real time

Mastercard today updated its Consumer Fraud Risk (CFR) solution to increase the ways it helps protect consumers from Real Time Payment scams. The AI-powered insights give more UK banks greater visibility into potentially fraudulent transactions so they can stop scams before they take place.

These scams, known as Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud – usually sparked by a fictitious website, email, text message or phone call – saw UK consumers defrauded out of £460m ($607m) in 2023 .

Today, banks return funds to victims on a voluntary basis. From October 7^th, new rules from the UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) will require banks to reimburse all APP fraud victims, except for limited exceptions.

Since early 2023, the Mastercard solution has helped 11 UK banks identify and stop a scam payment before the funds leave the victim’s account. It works by scanning multiple data points associated with a transaction, providing a risk score – in real time - to the sender’s bank.

The PSR collects payments data from 14 of the largest banks in the UK mandated to report. Across 2023 the data showed a 12% reduction in the total value of APP scams from £389m ($514m) to £341m ($450m).

The new, additional AI enhancements to Consumer Fraud Risk provide the receiving banks the same score within seconds, making it possible for them to detect when a payment may be destined for an account used by fraudsters, known as a mule account.

“Fraudsters have long sought to deceive the consumer through scam websites and fictious deals. That’s why, at Mastercard, we are turbocharging our technology, providing banks additional lines of defence – helping them better identify and stop scams in their tracks,” said Johan Gerber, Executive Vice President, Security Solutions at Mastercard.

Initial offline tests of the additional ‘inbound risk’ alerts have seen a 60% improvement, on average, in a bank’s ability to identify high risk mule accounts early, within its account base.

Mastercard has plans to expand Consumer Fraud Risk to markets globally within the year, expanding the protection offered to consumers and helping to build a more secure digital ecosystem for all.