Payments giant Visa (NYSE: V) on Thursday announced its intention to acquire Featurespace, a developer of real-time artificial intelligence (AI) payments protection technology that prevents and mitigates payments fraud and financial crime risks.
Visa believes acquisition of Featurespace will complement and strengthen Visa’s portfolio of fraud detection and risk-scoring solutions already in place and provide significant benefits to financial institutions, consumers, and the wider payments industry.
Incubated at Cambridge University’s engineering department, Featurespace has developed innovative algorithmic-based solutions to analyze transaction data and detect even the elusive fraud cases.
“Providing our clients with solutions that can adapt to and anticipate the changing threat landscape is of the utmost importance,” said Antony Cahill, Global Head of Value-added Services at Visa. “Featurespace’s strong foundation in AI will enhance our existing product portfolio and enable us to address our clients’ most complex and pressing challenges.”
The combined expertise of Visa and Featurespace will enable clients to manage fraud in real-time and further protect the payments ecosystem using AI-fueled solutions. This investment builds on Visa’s commitment to ecosystem security.
The transaction is expected to close in fiscal year 2025.
News of Visa’s plans to acquire Featurespace comes less than two weeks after Mastercard announced it would acquire threat intelligence firm Recorded Future from private equity firm Insight Partners for $2.6 billion.
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