Eye on Mastercard: Efforts To Reduce E-Commerce Fraud And Ease Review of Crypto Purchases

The unceasing effort to eliminate e-commerce fraud while allowing legitimate transactions to flow unimpeded could be getting another boost as Mastercard Inc. pairs with Ravelin Technology Ltd., a machine-learning fraud platform, to better validate a consumer’s identity without adding friction to the checkout flow.

Mastercard also introduced Crypto Secure, a service intended to help card issuers remain compliant with regulations governing digital assets. The new entry includes services from CipherTrace, a blockchain-security firm.

The Ravelin venture also incorporates digital identity verification tools from Ekata and real-time fraud data from Ethoca, both units of Mastercard.

“By bringing our capabilities together, we can help quick-commerce merchants better assess fraud before a payment is authorized, improving the checkout experience,” says Chris Reid, Mastercard executive vice president of identity solutions, in a statement.

Meanwhile, Mastercard says it wants to make it easier for issuers to review potential transactions with merchants accepting cryptocurrency. Its new Crypto Secure service enables issuers to identity and turn away transactions with crypto merchants that are prone to fraud, Mastercard says.

The new service provides issuers with the ability to correctly identify crypto exchanges, measure transaction approvals and declines, better know the exposure to a portfolio’s crypto risk with a single score, and have access to a benchmark rating for comparison to a peer group of financial institutions.

“Crypto Secure will provide card issuers with a platform that allows them access to insights which will improve the safety of crypto purchases, increasing consumer confidence and creating the same trust they expect when paying with Mastercard,” Ajay Bhalla, president of Mastercard cyber and intelligence, says in a statement.