Mastercard said Wednesday it hopes to detect when your credit or debit card number has been compromised before it ends up in the hands of cybercriminals.
In its latest software update rolling out this week, Mastercard is integrating artificial intelligence into its fraud prediction technology, which it expects will be able to spot patterns in stolen cards more quickly and allow banks to replace them before criminals use them. .
“Generative AI will allow us to figure out where your credentials may have been compromised, how we determine how it happened, and how we can quickly remediate the situation, not only for you, but also for other Mastercard customers who have not done so. Johan Gerber, executive vice president of security and network innovation, said in an interview:
Purchase, N.Y.-based Mastercard said that with the new update, it can use additional schema or contextual information, such as geolocation, time and address, and combine it with the incomplete but compromised information that appears in its database. credit card numbers to obtain information.
These patterns can now also be used in reverse, potentially using a large number of bad cards to see which merchants or payment processors may have been compromised. Pattern recognition goes beyond what humans can do through database queries or other standard methods, Gerber said.
Billions of stolen credit and debit card numbers are floating around the dark web, available for purchase by any criminal. Over the years, most data has been stolen from merchants through data breaches, but a significant amount has also been stolen from unsuspecting consumers who visit the wrong gas station, ATM or online A credit or debit card was used at the merchant.
These compromised cards may go undetected for weeks, months, or even years. Payment networks and banks only become aware of a potentially compromised batch of cards when the payment network itself dives into the dark web to obtain stolen numbers, a merchant learns of a breach, or the card is used by a criminal.
“We can now actually proactively reach out to banks to make sure we’re serving that consumer and get them a new card so they can get on with their lives with as little disruption as possible,” Gerber said.
Payment networks are largely trying to move away from “static” credit or debit card numbers (i.e. card numbers and expiration dates that are universally used by all merchants) and toward numbers that are unique to a specific transaction. But that shift could take years to materialize, especially in the U.S., which often lags behind in payments technology adoption.
EMVCo, the technology group behind credit and debit card chips, said that while more than 90% of face-to-face transactions globally now use chip cards, the figure in the United States is closer to 70%.
Mastercard’s update comes as archrival Visa Inc. looks for ways to get consumers to give up their 16-digit credit and debit card numbers. Visa last week announced major changes to how credit and debit cards operate in the United States, which means Americans will carry fewer physical cards in their wallets and the 16-digit credit or debit card numbers printed on each card will become more numerous. It’s becoming less and less important.
