Visa signed a definitive agreement on Monday to acquire Tel Aviv-based anti-fraud company BioCatch for $2.4 billion in cash, adding the Israeli firm to its network of cybersecurity, risk-management and payment-security solutions.
BioCatch serves more than 350 financial institutions in 21 countries, protecting 760 million users and 1.8 billion devices. Its artificial intelligence and machine-learning systems analyze more than 3,000 anonymized data points to identify suspicious activity, supporting the wider use of AI-based fraud prevention in digital payments.
“Account takeovers and scams cost the global economy over $1 trillion annually, and AI is enabling these attacks at unprecedented scale,” said Andrew Torre, president of value-added services, Visa.
“BioCatch will help our clients stop fraud before it reaches the point of payment. This acquisition is part of our strategy to help clients prevent cyber threats upstream while continuing to protect transactions as they occur, building trust into every transaction,” he added.
Visa said it has invested more than $13 billion in technology and infrastructure over the past five years to protect the payments ecosystem. The deal also reflects growing demand for real-time fraud detection across financial services.
“Real-time insights into customer intent continue to grow increasingly essential for institutions to establish trust within digital banking sessions,” BioCatch CEO Gadi Mazor said.
“For more than a decade, we’ve demonstrated behavior’s unique ability to distinguish the criminal from the legitimate. In the last couple of years, we’ve shown how real-time intelligence-sharing networks between our customers can amplify the power of our behavioral intelligence further still,” he added.
“Together with Visa, we’re even better positioned to advance our mission of making the world a safer place to transact and protect consumers from financial crime.”
