BUSINESS NEWS - As instant and account-to-account (A2A) payments become increasingly popular, financial institutions are facing a growing challenge: detecting fraud quickly enough to stop money from leaving a customer's account.

Visa has unveiled an enhanced version of A2A Protect, designed to help banks identify potentially fraudulent transactions in real time and intervene before funds are transferred.

The expanded solution introduces a new unified fraud score, incorporating technology from Featurespace for the first time in one of Visa's in-market solutions.

The aim is to give financial institutions clearer and faster signals about potential fraud, while reducing unnecessary alerts that can disrupt legitimate payments.

A2A payments are growing rapidly

The need for faster fraud detection comes as account-to-account payments continue to expand globally.

A2A transactions are projected to surpass 5.8 trillion by 2028, representing a 160% increase from 2024.

Visa says A2A Protect uses artificial intelligence and transfer-learning capabilities to give participating banks access to global risk insights without having to wait months for their own transaction data to generate enough intelligence.

Financial institutions also do not need to wait for other banks to join a consortium before gaining access to the solution.

Instead, participating banks can begin using the insights from day one.

Spotting fraud before authorisation

For financial institutions that opt into network-level intelligence sharing, A2A Protect can identify emerging scam hotspots and coordinated fraudulent activity across the wider payment ecosystem.

These patterns can be difficult for individual banks to identify on their own.

Having access to broader intelligence can give financial institutions an earlier and more complete view of potential risks, helping them identify suspicious activity before a transaction is authorised.

“Fraudsters move fast across payment types, and financial institutions need risk insights just as quickly, without slowing down legitimate payments,” says Walter Lironi, senior vice-president and head of Value-Added Services for Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at 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.”

Making fraud alerts easier to act on

The enhanced solution is designed to work with banks' existing systems through a single API, which Visa says can reduce implementation time and complexity.

When a transaction is flagged, the alert includes a plain-language explanation of why it was considered risky.

This is intended to help fraud teams understand the warning quickly and make informed decisions without unnecessarily disrupting genuine customers.

A broader approach to fighting scams

As payment methods evolve, fraudsters are also finding new ways to exploit them.

Visa says A2A Protect is designed to give banks access to intelligence that extends beyond their own transaction data, allowing them to identify patterns and emerging threats across the broader payments ecosystem.

For consumers, the objective is ultimately straightforward: identify suspicious transactions earlier, prevent fraud before money moves and reduce the chances of legitimate payments being incorrectly blocked.

Visa's enhanced A2A Protect forms part of the company's broader efforts to strengthen security as digital payments continue to grow.

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