How is Mastercard Preventing Payment Fraud at Scale?

Mastercard has launched its first threat intelligence offering designed specifically to use at scale in the payments sector, marking a significant expansion of its cybersecurity capabilities less than a year after acquiring cyber threat intelligence specialist Recorded Future.

The company unveiled Mastercard Threat Intelligence at Money20/20 US, a solution that integrates Mastercard's fraud insights and network visibility with Recorded Future's curated cyber threat intelligence platform.

The new offering addresses a critical gap in payment security: 60% of global fraud leaders report learning about cyber breaches only after fraud losses begin.

The solution aims to enable fraud and security teams to collaborate more effectively by providing actionable, real-time risk insights that can disrupt fraudulent transactions before they occur.

“As the lines between cybercrime and financial crime continue to blur, innovation is an imperative,” says Johan Gerber, Global Head of Security Solutions at Mastercard.

Johan adds that the solution “provides customers with actionable, real-time and targeted risk insights to disrupt fraudulent transactions, inform strategic defense and ultimately enable a more proactive approach."

How does Threat Intelligence work? 

Mastercard Threat Intelligence offers five distinct features designed to address different aspects of payment security.

Card testing detection provides real-time alerts and proactive declines of fraudulent test transactions, aiming to reduce downstream fraud whilst safeguarding cardholders.

The digital skimming intelligence component delivers quantitative data to help customers assess skimmer impacts and disrupt card-related malware.

Merchant threat intelligence supplies targeted payment fraud insights and high-level payment threat intelligence to assess merchant risk and enable faster incident response.

The platform also includes weekly reports detailing emerging threats and vulnerabilities across the broader payments landscape, alongside actionable case studies and fraud trend analysis to inform strategic defenses.

Recent strategy for preventing financial crime

Mastercard continues to build on its reputation for being a world leader in fighting fraud with technology. 

The payments giant launched a specialised Security Solutions programme earlier this year under its Start Path initiative. 

It invested in five start ups, maximising widespread efforts to tackle cyber crime and prevent fraud. 

Using AI, Mastercard has stopped US$50bn in fraud attacks against its network in the past three years.

In the last few days, Mastercard has additionally launched Merchant Cloud. 

The technology combines gateway services, security tools and AI fraud monitoring in scheme-agnostic solution for merchants. 

Cybersecurity testimonials

Tracy (Kitten) Goldberg, Director of Cybersecurity at Javelin Strategy & Research, noted that effective cybersecurity will increasingly depend on threat intelligence that crosses sectors and regions.

“Vendors with broad transactional data and analytics will play a key role in improving information-sharing among financial services, merchants and across the industry,” Tracy says.

She continues: “New doors are opening for advanced threat intel, facilitated through successful cyber fusion that incorporates a myriad of tools across identity verification, fraud detection, and indicators of compromise.

“Feeding threat intel across disparate teams and industries in meaningful and useful ways will help fraud and cybersecurity teams more readily identify trends, placing them in positions to move from reactive response to proactive mitigation.”

Threat Intelligence data has already yielded tangible results during market testing.

Over six months, Mastercard's ecosystem partners identified and removed malicious domains responsible for stealing payment card data that had impacted nearly 9,500 e-commerce sites and were linked to an estimated US$120m in fraud.

The solution is now available for issuers and acquirers globally, positioning Mastercard to address the growing convergence of cybersecurity and financial crime as payment systems become increasingly digitised.