Visa Leverages AI to Reduce False Positives and Fight Scams Across Southeast Asia
Visa is strengthening its fraud and risk solutions with advanced AI technology aimed at reducing false positives and providing a 360-degree view of customer behavior. This move follows Visa’s acquisition of Featurespace, a leader in adaptive behavioral analytics.
“With our recent acquisition of Featurespace, we now have advanced AI capability that helps our clients look at their customer for financial and non-financial realms,” Varun Mahindru, Head of Value Added Services for Regional Southeast Asia at Visa told BackgroundBriefing.news.
From Bad Behavior to Good Behavior Detection
Traditional fraud systems focus on spotting suspicious transactions, such as purchases at unusual merchants. Visa’s new approach flips the model by analyzing positive behavioral patterns through its Adaptive Behavioral Analytics algorithm. This method identifies anomalies by comparing them against a customer’s normal behavior, significantly reducing false positives—cases where legitimate transactions are mistakenly flagged as fraud.
False positives are costly for banks and frustrating for customers, often leading to blocked transactions that aren’t fraudulent. By focusing on good behavior, Visa aims to minimize these disruptions while improving fraud detection accuracy.
Scaling Beyond Cards to Accounts
Currently, 83% of Visa transactions in Singapore are scored using Visa’s fraud detection systems. The new capability extends beyond card transactions to include account-level monitoring, addressing the surge in scams across Asia.
The urgency is clear: scams in Asia reached an estimated $700 billion in 2024, according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA). Their survey revealed that 63% of adults in Southeast Asia have encountered a scam, highlighting the scale of the problem.
“We are now able to come into that space and help our banks identify those scams before they happen,” Mahindru added.
About the speaker:
Varun Mahindru
Head of Value Added Services for Regional Southeast Asia
Visa
Varun Mahindru, Head of Value Added Services for Regional Southeast Asia at Visa, is a seasoned leader in digital innovation and customer experience. Based in Singapore, Mahindru brings over a decade of experience in tier-one financial services, with a strong focus on strategy, leadership, and commercially driven digital transformation. His career spans roles in fintech business development, digital capabilities, and product management, consistently delivering impactful solutions across Asia Pacific.
Mahindru’s professional journey includes leadership roles at National Australia Bank and Vocus Group, where he spearheaded initiatives in digital wallets, payments, and customer experience platforms. He is passionate about customer-led innovation and has a proven track record of implementing user-centric digital solutions, including award-winning features and strategic fintech integrations. Holding a Bachelor of Business in Accounting from RMIT University, Mahindru continues to shape the future of financial services through visionary leadership and a commitment to innovation.
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5W1H summary:
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| What | 1. Decrease fraud alerts 2. Providing 360 view of the customer 3. Focus on non-cards |
| How | 1. Feature space 2. Beyond cards 3. Self-learning |
| Why | 1. Combat rising scams in Asia 2. Improve fraud detection accuracy 3. Reduce customer transaction disruptions |
| Who | 1. Visa 2. Varun Mahindru, Head of VAS SEA 3. Banks and financial institutions |
| Where | 1. Southeast Asia 2. Singapore as key market 3. Regional banking ecosystem |
| When | 1. Post-Featurespace acquisition 2. Current rollout phase 3. After 2024 scam surge |
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q1: What is Visa’s new fraud detection approach?
A: Visa uses AI-driven adaptive behavioral analytics to detect anomalies by analyzing good customer behavior instead of only spotting bad transactions.
Q2: How does this reduce false positives?
A: By focusing on normal behavior patterns, the system flags only unusual activity, minimizing legitimate transactions being blocked.
Q3: Why is this important for banks?
A: False positives frustrate customers and increase operational costs. Reducing them improves customer experience and fraud prevention.
Q4: How widespread is Visa’s fraud scoring today?
A: In Singapore, 83% of Visa transactions are already scored using Visa’s fraud detection systems.
Q5: What problem does this address beyond cards?
A: It tackles account-level fraud and scams, which surged to $700 billion in Asia in 2024, affecting 63% of adults in Southeast Asia.
Transcript of the interview:
My focus is on increasing our capability in fraud and risk solutions, specifically helping our clients reduce false positives providing a full 360 view of the customer and extending Visa’s capability beyond cards.
And what is Visa bringing to that conversation?
With our recent acquisition of feature space, we now have advanced AI capability that helps our clients look at their customer for financial and non-financial realms, meaning. That you can actually now identify if there are multiple attempts to change a passcode on the banking app as opposed to just looking at a transaction and what could have gone wrong.
What’s even more great about this new capability it focuses on it focuses on good behavior that comes through a trademark AI algorithm called Adaptive Behavioral Analytics. Now, let me describe that a little bit. In traditional fraud systems, we look for bad behavior happening on a card. Was your card used at a merchant that you typically don’t shop at, which could highlight an alert.
But in our new technology we look for good behavior. We look for what Mark does in his everyday life, and if something is not right, that gets flagged. Now the beauty about using that kind of a tool, it heavily reduces what I mentioned, false positives. For a bank, false positives are where a customer gets impacted or a transaction can get blocked, but it wasn’t really fraud.
And how will you measure your success?
The key success here is reduction of fraud. Both card and non card. If you think about card, now in Singapore, about 83% of visa transactions are already scored using our systems. So that’s four. So that’s eight out of 10 transactions are using our tools.
With the new capability, we are now moving to accounts as well. So meaning the rise in scams that we are seeing in Asia, and there’s, the numbers are quite scary if you look at. 2024, I think it was about $700 billion in scams that were recorded. The recent survey from GASA, which is the Global Antis Scam Association, reported that 63% of adults in Southeast Asia have seen a scam.
63%. That’s two out of three adults that have seen a scam. We are now able to come into that space and help our banks identify those scams before they happen.