Visa Introduces Advanced Identity Score to Help Financial Institutions Prevent New Account Fraud

Brand agnostic solution utilizes artificial intelligence to identify risk so credit and loan applications can advance with confidence

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) today announced a digital tool to help U.S. financial institutions with their efforts to combat new account fraud – estimated at $10 billion a year – and give consumers greater peace of mind.ⁱ

Advanced Identity Score combines Visa’s artificial intelligence and predictive machine learning capabilities with application and identity related data to generate a risk score for new account applications to help reduce fraud, prevent negative impact to brand loyalty and trust, and eliminate operational costs due to remediation. With U.S. cardholders spending an average of 15 hours to resolve new account fraud, Advanced Identity Score can decrease the number of new accounts opened with stolen identities, protect consumers against synthetic ID or account takeover fraud, save time and help eliminate a poor customer experience.ⁱⁱ

“Visa’s mission to connect the world and enable individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive is more important than ever with Covid-19 affecting communities and all parts of the economy,” said Melissa McSherry, senior vice president and global head of Data, Security and Identity Products and Solutions at Visa. “As consumers, financial institutions and merchants focus on controlling expenses during uncertain times, the cost of new account fraud in terms of money and time lost can be significant. Advanced Identity Score offers financial institutions a powerful tool to use on top of existing systems and processes to prevent identity related fraud. This is the latest example of the value that Visa brings with its scale and expertise in combining data with AI to deliver advanced services that benefit participants in the digital economy.”

Unique, brand agnostic solution

Most financial institutions employ a layered fraud prevention strategy using multiple tools to combat identity related fraud, but many legacy fraud prevention systems are rules-based with gaps and limitations that may create customer friction or false positives.

Advanced Identity Score helps financial institutions make more informed identity related risk decisions by generating a two-digit Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)-compliant identity fraud score in near real-time designed to help prevent fraud loss at the point of credit or loan application. It is the only fraud solution harnessing virtually all U.S. approved/declined bank card application data and account level fraud data to detect and prevent potential fraud.

Visa’s artificial intelligence examines data points in areas including application velocity (the frequency of applications within a period of time), fraud and suspicious activity, bankruptcy data across consumer identity elements, while incorporating data from government agencies, 3rd party data providers, law enforcement agencies, and self-reported data from consumers. This combination empowers financial institutions with a tool for risk management that can adapt as criminal behavior changes.

“With more than 14.7 billion data records breached since 2013, many of which include sensitive data such as name, tax ID number, and address, new account fraud has been a consistently growing challenge for financial institutions,” said Julie Conroy, research director, Aite Group. “Financial institutions are looking for solutions that can help effectively detect synthetic and stolen identities at the time of application. The consortium data and sophisticated analytics that power Visa’s Advanced Identity Score promise to make it a valuable addition to financial institutions’ control framework.”

Additional Resources

• Learn more about Visa security in the Visa newsroom and Visa Blog
• Follow Visa security updates on LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube

About Visa Inc.

Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is the world’s leader in digital payments. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, reliable and secure payment network - enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. Our advanced global processing network, VisaNet, provides secure and reliable payments around the world, and is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second. The company’s relentless focus on innovation is a catalyst for the rapid growth of digital commerce on any device for everyone, everywhere. As the world moves from analog to digital, Visa is applying our brand, products, people, network and scale to reshape the future of commerce. For more information, visit About Visa, visa.com/blog and @VisaNews.

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ⁱ Combined estimated losses of new account fraud and synthetic ID fraud, Javelin Strategy and Research, 2020 Identity Fraud Study: Genesis of the Identity Crisis, April 2020.

ⁱⁱJavelin Strategy and Research, 2020 Identity Fraud Study: Genesis of the Identity Crisis, April 2020.