Visa deploys AI for instant payments fraud detection
Company reported revenue of $9.5B last quarter, up 10% YoY
Payments behemoth Visa is using AI to improve its fraud detection as instant payment adoption grows.
Visa reported its total transactions increased 11% year over year to 63.8 billion in its fiscal first quarter, which ended Dec. 31.
Included are instant payments transactions facilitated through the Federal Reserve’s FedNow rail and The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments rail.
To manage growing payments volume and fraud threats, the San Francisco-based Visa is using AI-based models to identify fraud on account-to-account (A2A) payments and real-time payments networks, Chief Executive Ryan McInerney said during the company’s earnings call on Jan. 30.
Anti-fraud efforts
To enhance fraud protection, last year Visa:
- Launched Visa Protect for A2A payments in May to fight fraud and plans to expand the solution to 10 new real-time payments networks in 2025, McInerney said.
- Acquired Featurespace, a real-time, AI-driven payments fraud-fighting service provider, in December for an unknown amount, to bolster its fraud fighting capabilities.
The Featurespace acquisition enables Visa “to provide an expanded set of fraud prevention tools to our clients and protect consumers in real time across various payment methods,” McInerney said on the earnings call.
Q1 earnings
Visa reported a purchase of property, equipment and technology expense of $345 million in its Q1 2025 earnings report, up 29% year over year.
The company has been working to embed AI and AI tooling into its operations for years, McInerney said. Visa has deployed AI in:
- Client services;
- Sales;
- Analytics and modeling operations;
- Finance; and
- Marketing.
Using AI, Visa has “seen material gains in productivity, particularly in our engineering teams,” McInerney said. “Our product teams are also aggressively adopting gen AI to build and ship new products.”
Visa reported Q1 net revenue of $9.5 billion, up 10% YoY.
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