Reap has launched Sentry as coordinated attacks, false positives and fragmented fraud controls put pressure on payment providers to detect threats without blocking legitimate customers.
Payment fraud is becoming faster, more connected and more industrialised, according to Harris Leow, Reap’s head of product, who told SMEhorizon that businesses are no longer dealing with isolated bad transactions but with coordinated attacks that can combine social engineering, malware, bot activity, stolen credentials and mule networks. The shift matters because risk now runs across the whole payment journey, not just at the point of authorisation, which means card programmes need to spot problems in real time, before money leaves the system.
That change is one reason Reap has introduced Sentry, a managed card fraud and risk service designed to help payment providers detect emerging threats while limiting the number of legitimate transactions that are wrongly blocked. Leow said effective fraud management is no longer just a technology issue. It requires ongoing tuning of controls, specialist investigation, chargeback handling, fraud reporting and rapid responses when attackers change tactics. He pointed to industry research showing that 78% of financial-institution fraud and risk professionals believe their teams are too slow to keep up with agile attackers, while 66% of global fraud executives are worried about controls that sit in separate silos.
Certain attacks are especially hard to contain because the warning signs are often too small to notice in isolation. Leow said BIN attacks, which target the first digits of card numbers, can appear as minor low-value authorisation attempts or declines until they are viewed across a wider portfolio. Merchant breaches can be similarly difficult to identify quickly. Reap says Sentry watches the authorisation layer for emerging patterns, then adjusts programme controls as threats evolve, with the aim of catching coordinated activity earlier without creating unnecessary friction for customers.
Leow also argued that the damage from card fraud goes well beyond the value of the stolen transaction. Citing Datos Insights research, he said 76% of executives surveyed identified loss of consumer trust as a leading concern, while 69% pointed to high false-positive rates as a major problem. In other words, blocking genuine customers can hurt revenue and loyalty as much as fraud itself. That is why Reap says it tailors controls to each programme’s cardholder profile, geography and risk exposure rather than relying on broad thresholds that treat unusual behaviour as suspicious by default.
Looking ahead, Leow expects fraud management to move further away from static rules and towards continuous risk intelligence. He said artificial intelligence is helping criminals automate reconnaissance, produce more convincing social-engineering content and probe weaknesses at scale, but it can also help defenders connect weak signals across transactions, merchants, card ranges and behaviour patterns. Reap’s view is that technology will do more of the heavy lifting, but human judgement, clear policies and accountable operations will remain essential if providers want to reduce fraud without disrupting ordinary spending.
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.
