Visa’s $2.4 billion acquisition of fintech BioCatch signals a major shift in the fight against payment fraud. As AI makes scams more sophisticated and harder to detect, behavioral biometrics are emerging as one of the financial industry’s most important tools for distinguishing legitimate customers from fraudsters.
Biometrics are increasingly being used to enhance identity verification during payment authentication. In the EU, banks have begun requesting biometric authentication through their apps when customers make card transactions. They have found that this approach reduces not just fraud, but also unauthorized transactions and even product returns.
BioCatch’s technology analyzes behavioral data points such as keystrokes, touch gestures, and device handling to distinguish legitimate users from criminals in real time. The technology is currently used by more than 350 banking clients.
Fears of AI Fraud
The rise of AI was a major factor in Visa’s strategy, as financial institutions grapple with increasingly sophisticated AI-enabled fraud. A BioCatch survey of 80 UK fraud and compliance professionals found that nearly three-quarters of respondents said distinguishing legitimate AI-assisted transactions from malicious activity was very challenging. A similar proportion said that access to real-time intelligence would significantly improve their scam detection capabilities.
Behavioral biometrics are increasingly viewed as one way to address this challenge. Rather than relying solely on passwords, one-time passcodes, or transaction histories, these systems analyze how a person interacts with their device to help determine whether activity is legitimate. Because this happens passively in the background, it can bolster security while reducing the need for consumers to complete additional authentication steps.
The technology could become even more important as agentic AI becomes more widely used in commerce. As AI agents begin making purchases on behalf of consumers, FIs will need ways to determine whether a transaction reflects genuine customer intent—even when there is no human directly initiating or monitoring the purchase. Platforms like BioCatch analyze thousands of passive telemetry signals during a purchasing session to help distinguish human users from bots and other suspicious activity.
Visa’s Cybersecurity Portfolio
Visa’s growing portfolio of cybersecurity and fraud prevention tools underscores the increasing importance of securing the payment ecosystem. The company has invested $13 billion over the past five years to safeguard the integrity of its payments network. In addition to acquiring BioCatch, Visa paid $946 million to acquire fraud detection firm Featurespace in 2024.
Visa’s broader cybersecurity strategy also includes the Visa Vulnerability Agentic Harness, an open-source AI tool released this summer to help financial institution clients identify and remediate potential vulnerabilities. Visa is also participating in Project Glasswing, Anthropic’s invitation-only defensive cybersecurity initiative.
