Mastercard is expanding beyond traditional fraud detection with a new product called Mastercard Threat Intelligence. Announced at Money20/20 USA in Las Vegas, the company claims it’s the first threat intelligence solution focused specifically on payments at scale. It’s built on Mastercard’s own fraud data and global network visibility, combined with Recorded Future’s cyber intelligence platform, which Mastercard acquired less than a year ago.
According to Mastercard, most payment fraud starts long before a transaction occurs. The company says 60 percent of global fraud leaders only learn about breaches after financial losses begin, underscoring the growing overlap between cybersecurity and payment systems. The new solution is designed to bridge that gap by allowing fraud and security teams at banks and payment processors to share insights and stop attacks earlier in the process.
Johan Gerber, Mastercard’s global head of Security Solutions, said the tool provides “actionable, real-time, and targeted risk insights” that can disrupt fraudulent activity before it happens. The suite offers card testing detection, digital skimming alerts, merchant risk analysis, and weekly reports on new payment threats. Mastercard says it can even automatically decline suspected test transactions, protecting both cardholders and merchants from downstream fraud.
The data from Mastercard Threat Intelligence is already being used in the field. The company says it helped identify and shut down nearly 9,500 malicious domains tied to an estimated $120 million in e-commerce fraud during testing. Banco Mercantil del Norte, one of the early participants, says the product helps them “keep pace with main threats and trends” that their own systems struggle to monitor.
What makes this announcement interesting is how it positions Mastercard as not just a payments company, but a cybersecurity player. With banks and merchants facing a steady rise in sophisticated scams, Mastercard’s move could be seen as both a business opportunity and a defensive strategy to protect its own network. The partnership with Recorded Future also signals Mastercard’s growing interest in owning more of the data intelligence stack.
The service is now available globally for issuers and acquirers. While it’s promising, the real question is whether this type of centralized intelligence can stay ahead of the fast-moving cybercrime ecosystem… or if it will simply give fraudsters new systems to study and exploit.
