Visa Enhances A2A Protect to Stop Fraud Before Funds Leave Accounts
Visa, a world leader in digital payments, today announced an enhanced version of A2A Protect, delivering real-time risk insights that help banks stop account-to-account (A2A) fraud before money leaves customer accounts. The expanded solution introduces a new unified fraud score—Visa’s first in-market integration of Featurespace technology— helping give financial institutions faster, clearer signals to support the detection of more fraud while reducing unnecessary alerts.
Across Europe, fraudulent credit transfers cost consumers and businesses €2.5 billion in 20241,underlining the need for banks to stop scams before money leaves an account. A2A Protect leverages advanced AI and sophisticated transfer learning and gives banks immediate access to critical global risk insights on A2A transactions, without waiting months for models to develop intelligence from a bank’s own transaction data, and without having to wait for other banks to join a consortium, helping to deliver results and value from day one. Banks that opt in can incorporate additional network-level signals to enhance detection of emerging threats operating‑ across the ecosystem.
For financial institutions that opt into network level intelligence sharing, A2A Protect highlights emerging scam hotspots and coordinated fraud activity – insights that may be difficult for individual financial institutions to detect alone, and that help the wider ecosystem respond faster to new threats.
“Fraud is evolving rapidly, and banks need technology that can evolve even faster,” said Mandy Lamb, Head of Value-Added Services at Visa Europe. “We’re giving financial institutions a smart way to identify emerging threats and respond with greater precision, helping them stay ahead in an increasingly complex fraud landscape. This reflects our continued commitment to Europe and our focus on bringing practical innovations to banks that help them best protect their customers and grow with confidence.”
One major European bank using A2A Protect reduced over 50% more fraud, while reducing unnecessary alerts by over 40%, improving customer protection while keeping legitimate payments flowing. If such results are realised across the industry, a similar reduction could equate to around €1.25 billion2 being detected before funds leave accounts. Visa A2A Protect has been shown to increase fraud detection by 75% in the first six months of deployment.
“Fraudsters move fast across payment types, and financial institutions need risk insights just as quickly, without slowing down legitimate payments” said James Mirfin, Head of Risk and Security, 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.
A2A Protect integrates with financial institutions’ current systems through a single API, reducing implementation time and complexity. Each alert includes a plain language explanation of why a transaction was flagged, helping fraud teams act quickly and confidently without disrupting genuine customers.
