Every tap, swipe, and digital payment today relies on Artificial Intelligence (AI) working behind the scenes to deliver speed, security, and trust. As interest in AI and finance continues to surge, the real impact is coming from companies deploying it at global scale.
At Visa Direct, AI isn’t a buzzword, it is core technology. For more than 30 years, Visa has used AI to help protect transactions and prevent fraud so that today it is enabling smarter payments across billions of interactions each year. AI is embedded into the fabric of the Visa Direct network, helping power innovation, fight fraud, and make every transaction smarter and safer.
Here is a closer look at how Visa Direct is using AI to secure today’s payments and build the next era of commerce, from advanced fraud detection and real-time risk scoring to emerging agentic AI systems.
The AI behind every transaction
Every year, Visa Direct processes approximately 12 billion transactions across more than 195 countries and territories. At that scale, AI isn’t optional, it’s essential.
Visa Direct uses artificial intelligence to:
- Analyze and process transaction patterns in real time
- Assess risk across billions of data points
- Scale innovation across a global network
- Enable smarter routing and authorization decisions
Every payment is evaluated using advanced AI models that analyze vast amounts of anonymized transaction data to validate authenticity, reduce fraud, and minimize friction for legitimate customers.
This is the foundation of AI-powered payments: invisible intelligence built directly into the Visa Directs network, ensuring transactions are fast, secure, and scalable around the world.
Fighting fraud with AI at a global scale
Fraud is one of the most critical challenges and fastest evolving threats in modern finance and the global economy. It’s also an area where AI can deliver the most immediate and measurable impact. As scams become more sophisticated, using social engineering, automation, and even generative AI, traditional rule-based systems are no longer enough. This is where Visa Direct’s use of artificial intelligence becomes mission critical.
For Visa Direct scale, fraud prevention isn’t just about stopping bad transactions. It’s about doing so, fast, without disrupting legitimate payments.
Visa Direct uses AI fraud detection models that continuously learn from transaction patterns across billions of data points.
These models identify suspicious behavior by analyzing:
- Spending habits and transaction context
- Device, location, and merchant signals
- Emerging fraud trends across the ecosystem
As fraudsters’ tactics evolve, Visa Direct’s suite of AI tools adapt in real time, helping stop scams before they reach consumers, while minimizing false declines for legitimate payments. This balance between security and seamless experience is only possible with AI operating at scale.
Innovative fraud detection models
Unlike static rules that rely on predefined thresholds, Visa Direct AI fraud detection models evaluate transactions in context. Each payment is assessed using hundreds of real-time signals, including:
- Historical spending behavior
- Transaction amount, frequency, and velocity.
- Merchant and device characteristics
- Geographic and network patterns
Machine learning models are vigilant financial detectives, constantly scanning signals to figure out whether a transaction is suspicious or perfectly fine. They constantly adapt as people’s spending habits change and fraudsters get more creative. This approach lets AI tell the difference between a one-off splurge you make on a Tuesday and an actual fraud attempt, which means fewer frustrating false declines for you and sharper fraud detection overall.
And here’s where Visa Direct really shines: scale matters. Visa Direct is the world’s largest money movement platform, moving money over 195 countries and territories. With billions of transactions zipping through the Visa Direct network, AI is learning all the time. Every confirmed fraud case, every legitimate purchase, is another data point that makes the system smarter tomorrow than it is today. It’s like having a fraud-fighting brain that never sleeps, and the more it sees, the sharper it gets.
Agentic AI - the future of fraud defence
Looking ahead, one of the most compelling areas of Visa Direct AI innovation is the rise of agentic AI Systems designed² not only to analyze data, but to act intelligently toward defined outcomes.
Unlike traditional models that react after an issue occurs, agentic AI will enable payment systems to anticipate risk, make decisions, and take action in real time, all within trusted guardrails. This means more autonomous, adaptive, and resilient payment experiences.
In fraud prevention, agentic AI represents the next evolution. These systems go beyond identifying suspicious activity by proactively managing risk across the payment journey.
In the near future, Agentic AI could:
- Detect emerging fraud patterns and threat signals earlier, as they develop
- Dynamically adjust risk thresholds based on context, behavior, and real-time insights
- Optimize payment routing and authorization decisions to balance security and approval rates
- Coordinate protective responses across multiple points in the transaction lifecycle
AI and finance
While AI and finance tends to dominate headlines, Visa Direct’s focus remains practical and proven. From real-time fraud prevention to the emerging promise of agentic AI, Visa Direct continues to apply artificial intelligence where it matters most: protecting trust, enabling innovation, and powering the global flow of money.
Trust is the foundation of all digital payments, and AI is essential to maintaining it. By embedding intelligent fraud detection across the network, Visa Direct helps ensure that consumers can pay with confidence and businesses can operate without disruption.
Visa Direct. Move money your way.
To learn more about money movement, visit: visa.com/visadirect
Disclaimers
- Visa Direct clients and participants should always consult and seek approval from their internal compliance teams on sanctions screening controls and processes, and are solely responsible for their own compliance with applicable laws and regulations. Optional compliance controls and risk management tools and services are provided solely for the convenience of the Visa Direct clients and participants, and Visa makes no warranties with respect to them or their results.
- This is intended for illustrative purposes only. It contains depictions of a product currently in the process of deployment, and should be understood as a representation of the potential features of the fully- deployed product. The final version of this product may not contain all of the features described in this document.