Mastercard Introduces First-Ever Threat Intelligence Solution to Combat Payment Fraud at Scale

Mastercard has unveiled its Mastercard Threat Intelligence solution, a first-of-its-kind offering designed to combat large-scale payment fraud by unifying traditional fraud insights with advanced cyber threat intelligence. The new platform, announced at the Money20/20 USA conference, addresses the increasingly blurred lines between cybercrime and financial crime, acknowledging that fraud often originates from a cyberattack rather than at the point of transaction.

The solution is a direct outcome of Mastercard’s acquisition of Recorded Future, a top threat intelligence company. By combining Mastercard’s deep payment fraud insights and global network visibility with Recorded Future’s curated cyber intelligence, the platform enables issuing and acquiring banks, as well as merchant compliance teams, to proactively detect, prevent, and respond to cyber-enabled fraud. This integrated approach is critical, as approximately 60% of global fraud leaders report they are only notified of cyber breaches after fraud losses have already begun.

Mastercard Threat Intelligence provides customers with actionable, real-time insights across several key features. These include Card Testing Detection, which offers real-time alerts and automated declines of fraudulent test transactions to reduce downstream fraud. Another vital component is Digital Skimming Intelligence, providing quantitative data to help customers assess and disrupt card-related malware. Furthermore, the platform delivers Merchant Threat Intelligence for faster incident response and Payment Ecosystem Threat Intelligence through weekly reports detailing emerging vulnerabilities.

The company has already demonstrated the solution’s effectiveness in early testing. Over a six-month pilot period, the threat intelligence data helped partners identify and take down malicious domains linked to the theft of payment card data. These efforts resulted in the dismantling of threats impacting nearly 9,500 e-commerce sites and tied to an estimated $120 million in fraud. Johan Gerber, Global Head of Security Solutions at Mastercard, emphasized that the goal is to shift the industry from a reactive response to proactive mitigation, ensuring greater operational resilience and enabling businesses to grow confidently in the connected digital economy. Mastercard Threat Intelligence is available globally to both issuers and acquirers.