Visa Disrupts $2.6bn in Scam Activity

Visa's Scam Disruption (VSD) team has identified over $2.6 billion in fraud attempts globally in just over two years since its formation, the company announced.

The specialist unit uses advanced analytics and network-wide intelligence to spot suspicious activity that may signal organised scams, even when individual transactions appear legitimate. Once flagged, the team investigates these patterns to expose broader criminal networks and collaborates with banks, partners, and law enforcement to dismantle them. The unit's effectiveness appears to be accelerating, with scam identifications rising 22% in the second half of 2025 compared to the same period the previous year.

Among its recent successes, Visa's European VSD team uncovered a large-scale "survey scam" operating across social media platforms. The scheme lured consumers with heavily discounted products, including beauty boxes, digital cameras, and toolkits. After making an initial purchase, however, victims were unknowingly enrolled in recurring payment plans for significantly higher amounts.

Investigators traced the operation to roughly 1,000 merchants spread across 21 European acquirers, ultimately shutting down a fraud ring responsible for approximately $100 million (€85 million) in illicit earnings.

Michael Jabbara, Visa's Senior Vice President of Payment Ecosystem Risk and Control, said scams are increasingly global, adaptive, and fast-moving, requiring an equally agile response. He noted that Visa's approach relies on connecting signals across markets to detect emerging threats earlier using AI-enabled tools, working with ecosystem partners to intervene before consumers are harmed. The $2.6 billion figure, he added, reflects both the scale of the scam problem and the tangible value of disrupting it at its source rather than after the fact.