Payments giant Visa has established a specialised Scam Disruption practice to tackle emerging fraud schemes and protect consumers.
The newly formalised group operates under Visa’s Payment Ecosystem Risk and Control (PERC) division and prevented more than US$350 million in attempted scams in 2024.
This effort is part of Visa’s broader fraud prevention strategy, which blocked US$40 billion in fraudulent transactions across its network last year.
The Visa Scam Disruption (VSD) team employs a three-pronged approach to scam mitigation: scam intelligence, proactive investigations, and detection and disruption.
The team brings together experts from law enforcement, military intelligence, and data visualisation, combining human insight with advanced AI tools to track and dismantle fraud networks.
Investigators use Visa’s proprietary network-level data and generative AI-driven correlation and graphing analysis to identify fraud patterns before they escalate.
Visa also collaborates with financial institutions, law enforcement agencies, intelligence firms, and industry working groups to shut down fraudulent operations and strengthen the ecosystem’s ability to detect scams.
One of the largest scams uncovered by Visa involved fraudulent identity verification schemes.
Scammers sent phishing links disguised as legitimate verification sites via dating platforms, enrolling victims in recurring billing cycles.
By analysing transaction patterns and correlating IP data, Visa mapped a network of nearly 12,000 fraudulent merchants with similar scam attributes.
This effort prevented over US$37 million in losses and was referred to law enforcement for further action.
“Visa has invested over $12 billion dollars in technology over the last five years, including to reduce fraud and enhance network security. At the same time, we have made a significant investment in our best weapon against scammers: our people.
By combining our proprietary technology with the unique experiences and perspective our talent brings, we can more effectively identify and defeat even the savviest scammers.”
said Paul Fabara, Chief Risk and Client Services Officer at Visa.
“Fraud usually has no face, but a scam is personal. These scams directly impact the lives of victims, sometimes with devastating effects.
Visa also collaborates with intelligence partners, law enforcement, and industry working groups to ensure that not only do we shut these scammers down, but the other members of the ecosystem are also equipped to spot red flags on their own.”
said Michael Jabbara, SVP and Global Head of PERC at Visa.
Featured image credit: Edited from Freepik
