Visa Adds Generative AI Tool to Combat Enumeration Attacks

Visa has launched a generative artificial intelligence (AI) solution designed to help issuers combat enumeration attacks.

The new VAAI Score tool is being added to the Visa Account Attack Intelligence (VAAI) offering, beginning with U.S. issuers, the company said in a Tuesday (May 7) press release emailed to PYMNTS.

“With the VAAI Score, our clients now have access to real-time risk scoring that can help detect the likelihood of an enumeration attack so issuers can make more informed decisions on when to block a transaction,” Paul Fabara, chief risk and client services officer at Visa, said in the release.

Enumeration attacks, in which threat actors increasingly use automated scripts, botnets and other technologies to amplify these card testing attacks, account for $1.1 billion in fraud losses, according to the release.

The VAAI Score will help reduce these losses by using generative AI to assign each transaction with a risk score and prevent these attacks in card not present (CNP) transactions, the release said.

The tool can learn normal and abnormal transaction patterns, identify the likelihood of complex enumeration attacks in real-time and help clients use the risk score in their authorization decisioning when used with a rule engine, per the release.

“With access to advanced technology, fraudsters are monetizing stolen credentials faster than ever before,” Michael Jabbara, senior vice president and global head of fraud services at Visa, said in the release. “Enumerated transactions impact the entire ecosystem, and with the VAAI Score, we’re giving our clients a sophisticated tool that can help prevent cardholder accounts from being compromised and stop fraudulent transactions before they happen.”

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that many businesses and financial institutions are struggling to find ways to address the increasing sophistication of financial crime.

Fifty-eight percent of financial institutions said the sophistication of fraud schemes is a challenge in combating fraud, and about one-quarter of the largest financial institutions by asset size consider this the most important challenge they face, according to “The State of Fraud and Financial Crime in the U.S.,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Featurespace collaboration.

The report also found that nearly two-thirds of financial institutions reported an increase in fraud using credit cards.