Mastercard has recently unveiled its Mastercard A2A Protect, designed to shield consumers from fraudsters and ensure their transactions are secure.

This new tool integrates advanced fraud prevention technology with a clear framework for dispute resolution. It aims to empower banks to provide customers with robust protection against fraudulent activities.

Initially, Mastercard A2A Protect will concentrate on high-risk areas like Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud, offering a mix of preventive measures and consumer protections alongside recovery processes for misdirected payments. Future stages aim to cover a wider range of scenarios where products or services have been purchased.

Key Features of Mastercard A2A Protect

As per the official announcement, this solution is intended to support banks throughout each transaction by preemptively blocking fraudulent activities. It also aims to enhance payment scoring capabilities and help identify high-risk transactions more effectively.

Additionally, it supports banks’ efforts in combatting money laundering (ML) and financial crimes through the use of Mastercard’s Trace technology, while assisting them in identifying or closing ‘mule’ accounts. The solution also introduces a standardized fraud and loss reporting mechanism to give banks access to better fraud insights.

Mastercard A2A Protect also focuses on streamlining the dispute resolution process for customers and offering banks a straightforward framework and comprehensive multilateral standards to promote best practices. It aims to reduce costs and speed up resolution by providing a uniform procedure for addressing disputes across multiple use cases via Mastercard’s central platform.

Monzo, NatWest, and Santander are currently partnering with Mastercard to develop and deploy this service in the UK Faster Payments system later this year.