Mastercard has a new software tool – Crypto Secure – in the offering to help protect against crypto fraud. It will bring to banks and other users a secure system by which they can identify and protect against fraudulent transactions and schemes on crypto exchanges within the Mastercard payment ecosystem.
Crypto Secure is secured by a California-based blockchain security platform, CipherTrace, which was acquired by Mastercard in 2021. It uses similar technology that helps trace illicit crypto-related activity. Crypto Secure, with the help of artificial intelligence algorithms, will provide risk ratings to banks and other users. It uses on-chain as well as off-chain transaction data to rate the risk an activity poses – red for high risk and green for low risk.
Ajay Bhalla, the President of Cyber and Intelligence Business at Mastercard, said the launch of Crypto Secure will help bring about compliance in a complex regulatory environment. He shared that the idea is that the kind of trust it provides for digital commerce transactions, Mastercard wants to be able to provide the same kind of trust to digital asset transactions for consumers, banks and merchants. Bhalla explained the anti-fraud tool will not make risk judgments on behalf of the banks. It’s up to the individual banks and cardholders to do.
The CipherTrace report highlighted that there has been an increase in hacks and other crypto-related cyberattacks resulting in the loss of millions of dollars worth of assets. The total percentage of illicit transactions is less than 1% of global numbers but accounts for huge amounts of money stolen.
