Revenue and competitive advantage is one thing, but Visa and Google must be waking up every morning hoping they can turn the corner on combating scammers. Given that consumers lost a trillion dollars to fraud last year, we’ll take all we can get.
Visa has just announced new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven efforts to help it oversee the 200-plus billion transactions it does every year. With its new gears in play, Visa says it analyzes 500 data elements in every transaction to identify and stop fraud in real-time.
It’s not perfect yet, the company admits, but it says it’s already identifying 60% of real-time payment fraud and scams previously undetected by financial institutions.
The additional difference-maker is the “data tokens” that Visa’s using.
Much like ApplePay and GooglePay, these tokens replace sensitive card information (card number, expiration date, etc.) with a unique, randomly generated code. The token is used for payment processing instead of the actual card details. The result is that a scammer has a far less chance of getting their hands on your personal or bank account information.
Google and its advancements for Android users’ security
Android users got a new leg up on Apple iPhone owners recently and are now better protected from fraud and surveillance with new security features introduced at Google's I/O 2024.
Google’s focus on Android phones makes perfect sense since many of the account phishing attempts these days come from text messages and alerts. To that end, a major update in Google’s move is the hiding of one-time passwords (OTPs) from notifications. This blocks a common way that malicious actors steal OTPs used for account logins and financial transactions.
In addition, Android 13's restricted settings have been expanded. Installing apps from unverified sources now requires explicit user approval to enable sensitive permissions. This step aims to protect users from accidentally granting dangerous permissions to fraudulent apps.
Here’s Google’s Dave Burke, who explains what Android users can expect with upcoming system enhancements.