As transactions accelerate and criminals adopt deepfakes and AI, banks and payment firms are turning to behavioural analytics and automated monitoring to identify fraud before payments are completed.
Visa’s ethics and compliance chief for Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus says the payments industry has entered an era in which speed is both its greatest strength and one of its biggest security challenges. Speaking at a Radio NV panel event, she argued that modern payments now resemble Formula 1 rather than city driving: transactions move so quickly that fraud controls can no longer rely on after-the-fact reviews alone.
That shift, she said, is forcing banks and payment companies to move from retrospective monitoring to systems that can spot warning signs in real time. In place of daily, weekly or monthly batch analysis, firms are increasingly turning to machine learning, predictive analytics, behavioural analysis and other forms of automation to identify suspicious activity while it is still unfolding. The logic is simple: if criminals are investing in artificial intelligence, deepfakes and other sophisticated tools, legitimate financial institutions have to invest as well if they want to keep pace.
The compliance executive also stressed that strong security should be almost invisible to the customer. When fraud controls are working properly, she said, people should be able to make fast, simple and safe payments without thinking about how many checks are being carried out behind the scenes. But she warned that a one-size-fits-all model no longer makes sense. Effective controls now depend on segmentation, benchmarking and a deeper understanding of a customer’s digital footprint, because every payment generates data that can be used to build a behavioural picture.
That broader approach is reflected in products already being marketed across the sector. Hyperwatch says its fraud-detection infrastructure analyses transaction speed, value patterns and geographic anomalies in real time, while scoring payments against more than 200 behavioural indicators. Alogram describes its platform as a trust layer that combines identity, behaviour, device, location and network intelligence. IBM’s Safer Payments system is built to monitor thousands of payments per second, and Plaid says its AI tools are designed to improve fraud detection and risk assessment using real financial data. The common thread is a move towards faster, more granular monitoring, which the Visa executive said is now essential if the industry wants to protect customers without slowing down commerce.
Disclaimer: This article is intended to inform and educate, not to recommend or endorse any financial product, investment or strategy. Please consider your own financial circumstances and seek professional advice where appropriate before making financial decisions.
