Visa Targets Upstream Cyber Threats to Curb Fraud Risk

Visa has introduced a new commercial offering aimed at enabling financial institutions to detect and mitigate cyber threats before they escalate into fraud and financial damage.

Across the corporate finance landscape, fraud is increasingly understood as the downstream result of earlier, often avoidable, cyber incidents.

These breaches frequently originate from compromised data, stolen credentials or exploited systems long before any fraudulent transaction occurs, according to the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

The Visa Threat Intelligence Platform (VTIP) provides clients with direct access to the same advanced cybersecurity capabilities Visa deploys to protect its extensive global payments infrastructure.

Unveiled at the Visa Payments Forum (VPF) in Paris, the announcement coincides with broader developments, including progress in agentic commerce.

The Paris forum opened with remarks from Visa President Oliver Jenkyn and CTO Rajat Taneja, with Rajat emphasising that "trust is the very foundation of commerce".

During the session, Oliver outlined four strategic priorities for the company:

• Generative AI and the Future of Commerce
• Stablecoins
• Fraud & Security
• Trust & Brand

He pointed to the extensive efforts underway by CTOs, CISOs and Chief Risk Officers, noting that fintechs and venture capital firms have “security and fraud protection at the top of their [priority] list”.

Cyber attacks exposing sensitive payment credentials can emerge from any point within the payments ecosystem, spanning merchants, issuers, acquirers, processors and third-party providers.

In many instances, both corporate and consumer credentials are compromised, circulated and later exploited, leading to significant financial losses and operational disruption for institutions.

Commercialising internal security infrastructure

The technology behind VTIP originates from Visa’s in-house cyber defence operations and has been rigorously tested within its global network.

The company currently blocks around 90 million cyber attacks and 11 million phishing emails each month across more than 200 countries and territories, guided by an internal objective of zero breach and zero disruption.

By acting as its own first user, Visa validated the platform against real-world threats before making these capabilities available to the wider financial ecosystem to help anticipate and counter emerging risks.

Mandy Lamb, Head of Value-Added Services at Visa Europe, comments: “Fraud is often the result of cyber incidents that go undetected until it is too late

“With the Visa Threat Intelligence Platform, we are helping financial institutions identify risks earlier and respond with greater precision before they may lead to fraud or financial loss. 

“By bringing together cyber and payments intelligence, we’re enabling our clients to better protect their customers, reduce the damaging impact of fraud and strengthen confidence in digital payments.”

Targeted intelligence streams for risk teams

Visa’s platform delivers five core capabilities tailored to financial institutions:

• Threat Intelligence: Provides indicators of compromise linked to malware through threat intelligence insights
• Vulnerability Intelligence: Identifies specific vulnerabilities and exposures relevant to each organisation
• Brand Intelligence: Supports reputation protection by detecting and addressing impersonation and brand misuse
• Digital Identity Intelligence: Focuses on internal security by monitoring and safeguarding executives and employees from targeted attacks
• Financial Intelligence: Designed for risk teams, this capability surfaces compromised payment credentials from the dark web and enhances them with VisaNet data, converting raw information into actionable intelligence.

By integrating cyber and fraud intelligence, financial institutions can better anticipate upstream threats, prioritise mitigation efforts and reduce the risk of cyber incidents escalating into major fraud events.

The launch comes amid significant investment from Visa, which has allocated at least US$13bn to technology over the past five years to strengthen security and combat fraud.

As cyber threats continue to evolve at pace, financial institutions face increasing demand for payments-focused threat intelligence solutions.

Through VTIP, Visa is extending its proven internal cybersecurity capabilities to clients, supporting earlier threat detection and helping to safeguard the broader digital payments ecosystem.