Mastercard partners Microsoft for safe online shopping

Mastercard has launched an enhanced identity solution designed to improve the online shopping experience and tackle digital fraud in a new collaboration with Microsoft Corporation.

The President, Cyber and Intelligence, Mastercard, Ajay Bhalla, stated this in a statement on Monday.

Bhalla said that delivering a frictionless shopping experience was critical as retailers looked to shift window shopping and price comparison visits to confirm sales.

He noted that the moment consumers enjoyed the convenience of shopping online, fraudsters also sought to develop new methods to use these same channels for ill-gotten gains.

Bhalla added that one of the growing types of digital fraud was first-party fraud, where a legitimate purchase was made online but later disputed. He said First-party fraud was estimated to be a 50 billion dollars global issue.

He said the Mastercard had directly addressed these needs by enhancing its Digital Transaction Insights solution with next-generation authentication and real-time decisioning intelligence capabilities.

Bhalla explained that the solution paired Mastercard’s network insights with the merchant’s own data to confirm the consumer is whom they claimed to be.

He said that this provided financial institutions with the additional intelligence needed to optimise their authorisation decisions and approve more genuine transactions.

“Shopping online should be simple, quick and secure. But that isn’t always the case.

“We’re committed to developing advanced identity and fraud technology to help enhance the real-time intelligence we provide to financial institutions around the globe.

“This builds on our longstanding commitment of working across the industry to provide advanced technologies that enable trust, and help build a safe and thriving digital ecosystem for all,” Bhalla said.

Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President, Business Applications and Platforms, Microsoft, said: “We are excited to partner with Mastercard to leverage our cloud-native, cutting-edge fraud assessment tools to empower issuers and merchants to prevent more fraud and approve more genuine users.

“This partnership lays the foundation for the future of global fraud prevention where data silos are no longer a barrier to security,” he said.

Our correspondent reports that the Digital Transaction Insights are used across a wide range of online checkout instances, from click-to-pay functionality and wearables to digital wallets and in-app purchases.