Following this week’s Global Anti-Scam Alliance Summit in Lisbon, Visa (NYSE: V), a global leader in digital payments, today announced that its dedicated Scam Disruption team has identified over €2.2 billion ($2.6 billion) in fraud attempts globally since its creation just over two years ago. This represents an additional €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion) uncovered since October 2025.
The Visa Scam Disruption (VSD) practice is a specialist team focused on spotting and stopping scams before they reach consumers. Using advanced analytics and intelligence from across the Visa network, the team identifies suspicious activity that can signal organised scams — even when payments appear legitimate. It then investigates these patterns to uncover wider criminal networks and works with banks, partners and law enforcement to shut them down.
By stopping scams at their source and feeding insights back into the system, the practice helps protect people’s money, supports clients in tackling emerging threats, and strengthens trust across the payments ecosystem. In the second half of 2025, the VSD team also identified 22% more scams than the year before.
David Capezza, Chief Risk Officer, Visa Europe, said: “Every day, members of the VSD team work tirelessly to identify and help dismantle global criminal networks that target unsuspecting consumers around the world. The work they do to protect consumers ensures a stronger, more resilient ecosystem that benefits everyone.”
One of the scams the European VSD team has been tracking over recent months is a widespread ‘survey scam’ taking place on social media. The scam promised products such as beauty boxes, digital cameras or toolkits at bargain prices, and once cardholders had made an initial purchase, they were unwittingly signed up for recurring payments – for much higher sums. The team eventually identified around 1,000 different merchants at 21 European acquirers, shutting down a scam ring responsible for around €85 million ($100 million) in fraudulent earnings.
Michael Jabarra, Senior Vice President, Payment Ecosystem Risk and Control, Visa, added: “Scams are global, adaptive, and fast-moving — and fighting them requires the same. Visa’s Scam Disruption practice uses intelligence from across our global network to connect signals across markets, detect evolving threats earlier using AI-enabled capabilities, and help stop scams with key ecosystem partners before they harm consumers. The $2.6 billion in scam activity we’ve identified shows both the scale of the challenge and the value of disrupting it at the source.”
This content was developed for a European audience and relates to Visa’s offerings in Europe