Mastercard Launches Threat Intelligence to Combat Payment Fraud
▼ Summary
– Mastercard Threat Intelligence combines Mastercard’s fraud insights with Recorded Future’s cyber threat intelligence to help banks detect, prevent, and respond to cyber-enabled fraud.
– The solution addresses the blurring lines between cybercrime and financial crime by enabling fraud and security teams to work together proactively.
– Key features include real-time card testing detection, digital skimming intelligence, merchant threat intelligence, payment ecosystem reports, and actionable payment intelligence reports.
– The launch follows Mastercard’s acquisition of Recorded Future and has already helped partners identify malicious domains linked to $120 million in fraud.
– Industry experts emphasize that effective cybersecurity depends on cross-sector threat intelligence sharing to move from reactive response to proactive mitigation.
Mastercard has unveiled a powerful new security tool called Mastercard Threat Intelligence, designed to tackle payment fraud by merging the company’s deep fraud analysis and global network data with specialized cyber threat intelligence from Recorded Future. This integrated solution empowers issuing and acquiring banks to better detect, prevent, and respond to fraud that originates from cyberattacks, helping fraud and merchant compliance teams protect their organizations.
Fraud often begins not at the transaction point, but as a cyber intrusion. A significant 60% of fraud leaders worldwide report they only learn about cyber breaches after financial losses have already started. This reality means payment fraud is no longer just a financial concern, it’s a critical cybersecurity challenge that directly affects a company’s profitability. Mastercard Threat Intelligence closes the communication gap between fraud and security teams, enabling them to collaborate effectively and stop fraudulent activities before they cause harm.
Johan Gerber, Mastercard’s global head of Security Solutions, emphasized the necessity of innovation as cybercrime and financial crime increasingly overlap. He stated that Mastercard Threat Intelligence delivers actionable, real-time, and targeted risk insights to customers. This allows them to disrupt fraudulent transactions, strengthen their defensive strategies, and adopt a more forward-looking security posture.
Mastercard Expands Cyber Intelligence Capabilities for Payment Security
Mastercard has introduced a new Threat Intelligence service designed to give banks, merchants, and payment processors access to real-time data and analysis on emerging fraud and cyber threats. The platform builds on Mastercard’s acquisition of Recorded Future in 2024 and strengthens its strategy of merging financial and cybersecurity intelligence into a unified framework.
Key capabilities of the new service include:
Card testing detection – The system identifies and blocks fraudulent card testing activity as it happens, sending instant alerts and automatically declining suspicious transactions. This proactive defense limits follow-up fraud and enhances cardholder protection.
Digital skimming intelligence – Customers gain access to detailed metrics showing the scope and effect of digital skimming operations. This intelligence helps detect malware and compromised payment pages, relying on Mastercard’s partnerships across the payment industry to secure shared infrastructure.
Merchant threat intelligence – The platform provides focused insights into payment fraud and merchant-related risks, helping businesses assess exposure and respond quickly to suspicious activity.
Payment ecosystem threat intelligence – Weekly briefings summarize new vulnerabilities, threat actor tactics, and active campaigns across the global payments network, ensuring partners stay informed as risks evolve.
Payment intelligence reports – Regular reports deliver case studies, fraud trend analysis, and recommendations that help institutions refine their defenses and adapt to new attack patterns.
According to Tracy Goldberg, Director of Cybersecurity at Javelin Strategy & Research, modern cybersecurity increasingly depends on cross-sector threat intelligence that connects data from multiple regions and industries. Vendors with large-scale transactional visibility, like Mastercard, play an essential role in facilitating better information sharing among banks, merchants, and technology providers.
Goldberg added that the next frontier lies in cyber fusion, where identity verification, fraud detection, and compromise analysis tools are fully integrated. Sharing threat intelligence across organizational and industry boundaries enables security teams to anticipate threats instead of merely reacting to them.
The service’s effectiveness has already been tested. Mastercard’s network partners have used its data to locate and dismantle malicious domains responsible for payment card theft. Over six months of market trials, these operations uncovered nearly 9,500 compromised e-commerce sites, linked to an estimated $120 million in fraudulent transactions.
Irvin Salinas Pineda, a fraud specialist at Banco Mercantil del Norte, said the new system will help his institution stay ahead of complex cyber threats that are often difficult to monitor under high operational workloads.
(Source: HelpNet Security)
