Visa USA is adding account fraud information from eFunds to its customer screening service in a bid to help its card-issuing members to detect fraudulent card applications.
The enhanced service, which Visa has developed in partnership with eFunds subsidiary Chex Systems, enables issuers to screen debit and credit card applications and change of address requests against a database to verify a range of data such as address, phone numbers, bankruptcy information, and now related current account fraud information from eFunds.
Visa says a recent study with three US member financial institutions showed that the new service could have prevented an estimated 23.5% of total fraud and charge-off losses. The addition of account fraud data on balance provided in the study a nearly 50% increase in detection performance. Furthermore, based on this study, Visa says a net benefit of up to $500 could be realised for every $1.00 in alert expense.
Rahul Gupta, senior vice president and division executive at eFunds. "By adding fraudulent checking account information to Visa's risk management services, Visa's members will have access to enhanced data and new capabilities to improve their decisions and reduce fraud losses."
Visa says full availability of the new application risk tool is planned for third quarter 2005.