MasterCard Releases Real-Time Fraud Monitoring Tool

Today MasterCard announced the release of Expert Monitoring Fraud Scoring for Merchants, a new tool aimed at helping merchants mitigate fraud risk. The tool helps detect and predict fraud in card-not-present or online transactions originating from U.S.-issued cards.

The Expert Monitoring Fraud Scoring for Merchants tool uses a fraud detection model designed specifically for merchants to evaluate a long span of cardholder transaction history and measure in real time the likelihood of a transaction being fraudulent. Based on that information, the tool assigns each card-not-present or online transaction a predictive fraud score. The merchant can then review or automatically decline transactions with high-risk scores.

[For more on e-commerce fraud, read "Study Says Online Merchants Made Significant Progress Fighting Fraud in 2011."]

MasterCard says it conducted simulations with the new tool and found that e-commerce merchants could reduce fraud loss by 15 to 30 percent by using it to monitor transactions. The company also notes that the new tool aims to help not only to help protect merchants, but also card-issuing financial institutions and cardholding consumers.

Expert Monitoring Fraud Scoring for Merchants will be available to merchants around the world in May.