Visa and ID Analytics Partner to Fight Identity Fraud

SAN FRANCISCO and SAN DIEGO – Visa USA and ID Analytics, Inc., the Identity Risk Management company, announced today a partnership that will enable financial institutions to better identify and stop fraudulent debit and credit card applications. As a result, Visa cardholders will be better protected from identity fraud.

Visa will provide to its members, through Visa Advanced ID Solutions, a customized version of ID Analytics ID Score — an empirically-derived risk assessment score that determines the likelihood of whether applicants are who they claim they are. This version of the ID Score will be available to financial institutions in early 2006 through Visa’s existing systems, allowing Members to receive this customized ID Score with minimal impact to their current workflow.

“One of Visa’s highest priorities is to protect cardholders and our Members from fraud and identity theft,” said Jean Bruesewitz, senior vice president, processing and emerging products, Visa USA. “Visa’s offering of the ID Analytics identity risk score will help thwart identity thieves’ attempts to open new payment card accounts or take over existing accounts. Fraud within the Visa system has fallen to a system low of just 6 cents per $100 transacted.”

ID Scores are generated from ID Analytics’ ID Network, the nation’s first and only real-time fraud prevention system that is continuously fed with cross-industry identity elements. These elements are received from multiple organizations, industries, and third-party data sources and are processed using Graph Theoretic Anomaly Detection (GTAD), ID Analytics’ purpose-built, advanced pattern recognition technology that discriminates between legitimate and suspicious identity behavior.

A joint study by Visa and ID Analytics projects that Member financial institutions that use the ID Score in combination with Issuers’ Clearinghouse Service (ICS) alerts could realize an incremental lift in identification of fraudulent applications of between 17 and 34 percent. The customized ID Score, available through Visa’s partnership with ID Analytics, is the newest addition to the Visa Advanced ID Solutions suite of fraud fighting services.

“This partnership with Visa presents a great opportunity to bring the benefits of our ID Score to even more card issuers, and therefore more consumers,” said Bruce Hansen, chairman and CEO of ID Analytics. “By evaluating identity risk in real time, at the point of application, together we will be able to detect and prevent more identity fraud.”

Visa is a sponsor of ID Analytics’ fourth annual Identity conference, to be held September 19-21, 2005 in Dana Point, CA. Identity 2005 brings together experts at the forefront of identity fraud detection and prevention from across industries and around the world to explore, debate and discuss issues around Identity Risk Management. For more information, go to http://www.idanalytics.com/identityConference/index.html.