Visa employee working behind two computers in front of a wall of screens.
The fraud economy is becoming more global, more sophisticated, and more personal than ever. In fact, as I discussed live on stage at Web Summit Vancouver this year, scams cost consumers over $1 trillion globally last year. Scammers are thriving by hiding in plain sight, exploiting trust, and preying on unsuspecting consumers. But every scammer leaves a digital trail, and at Visa, we’re committed to tracking those signals, disrupting the fraudsters, and safeguarding the payment ecosystem.
Detecting the dark side of commerce
At Visa, protecting consumers is non-negotiable. That’s why we’ve invested $12 billion over the last five years to advance our cyber, fraud and risk capabilities. One of our most powerful efforts to date is the creation of Visa Scam Disruption (VSD), a dedicated practice that goes beyond defending consumers against scammers to proactively hunt them down and dismantle their operations.
Incorporating the best practices of elite threat intelligence units but adapting them for the anti-scam fight, VSD brings together a cross-disciplinary team that includes cybersecurity engineers, AI developers, former law enforcement, military professionals and data visualization experts. Our mission: use advanced investigative techniques, generative AI tools, proprietary technology and extensive network-level data to identify patterns, connect the dots and decisively neutralize complex scams before they cause widespread harm.
Our team of fraud-fighters
A recent example of VSD’s mission in action is our takedown of a massive scam operation that involved 12,000 fraudulent dating websites and spanned ten financial institutions and two continents. These scammers exploited unsuspecting victims by posing as potential love interests asking to use a legitimate dating ID site and trapping them into a cycle of unauthorized charges and fraudulent transactions.
Here’s how it worked:
Scammers posed as real people on dating apps, built trust with their victims and asked them to complete a “background check” before meeting. When victims agreed to the check, they were unknowingly signed up for recurring payments, while their cards were charged multiple times by different merchants that were operated by the same bad actors running the scam.
VSD uncovered the scam through a mix of proprietary technology and human intelligence. Our investigation began when our Automated Payment Fraud Disruption (APFD) team flagged a cluster of merchants with suspicious merchant activity, including bizarre naming conventions and exceptionally high decline rates - some as high as 90 percent.
Plus, all the merchants fell into the dating and escort services category, which Visa knew could be a hotspot for scams. So, we took a closer look.
By using transaction analysis and infrastructure mapping, we uncovered connections between thousands of fraudulent merchants.
But analyzing the data only got us so far. We turned to open-source platforms like Reddit and underground forums like the dark web to incorporate victim’s discussions about the scam and traced the fraudulent merchants back to one singular company.
With the pieces in place, VSD worked directly with acquiring partners to terminate the fraudulent merchants and cut them off from the network. Simultaneously, we compiled a comprehensive intelligence package that mapped out the entire operation and shared it with law enforcement so they could pursue the individuals behind these nefarious attacks.
Our takedown ultimately dismantled the scam’s infrastructure and prevented more than $37 million in potential victim losses.
Staying Ahead of Tomorrow’s Threats
It is true that scammers are becoming more sophisticated and finding new ways to deceive, manipulate, and exploit people. Fraudsters are already experimenting with generative AI to streamline and scale their scams. Picture the earlier example, but instead of human scammers posing as potential matches on dating sites, we now have AI-driven agents—programmed to interact with countless users at once—taking fraudulent operations to an entirely new level.
But the good news is that we’re moving faster.
Since the inception of our group earlier this year, VSD has shut down more than $350 million in potential scam fraud. We’re scaling our capabilities, using automation and leveraging advanced data tools to detect scams earlier, respond faster, and neutralize threats more effectively.
And there’s real satisfaction in the work: there’s nothing like shutting down a fraudulent ring and knowing we’ve helped countless people avoid becoming victims.
At Visa, we are laser-focused on protecting the payment ecosystem. Every person who swipes, taps or clicks deserves the confidence of knowing their payment is safe and secure. Earning and keeping their trust aren’t just words to us. It is something we strive for each and every day.