Securing the future of payments: Insights from Matthew Driver, Executive Vice President (Services, Asia Pacific), Mastercard

Digital payments are now the norm. These transactions, driven by the broad adoption of smart devices, greater global connectivity, and consumer preference for speed and convenience, have transformed commerce worldwide. While hardly niche anymore, the rapid growth of digital payments has also given rise to crucial dialogues surrounding financial safety and security. A global survey by Mastercard reveals that 76% of survey respondents are more concerned about cyber risks impacting their lives than they were two years ago.

While an interconnected world opens up countless opportunities for growth and progress, scammers exploit human vulnerabilities through technology to wipe away people's hard-earned financial resources. This is the dark side of the growth and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). Now, cyber criminals can create voice clones or develop hyper-realistic personas with the intent to scam people. And such scams are on the rise. According to one Mastercard survey, 80% of global consumers received a scam attempt last year, and losses of more than $B were reported in the first half of 2025 alone.

There is now a greater need than ever for sophisticated fraud prevention tools that can effectively address such blind spots.

In an exclusive chat, Matthew Driver, executive vice president, Services, Asia Pacific, Mastercard, outlines how his company is deploying AI-powered security into digital ecosystems in a deeply connected world where trust is the new currency.

The world continues to expand digitally, and cyber fraud is becoming a lot more sophisticated. Under these circumstances, what does the future of fraud defence look like?
Fraud management used to mean identifying suspicious activity after it had occurred. That approach simply no longer holds up. Today's scams can wipe out an account in seconds, so priority must also be given to prevention.

The shift we're seeing is from point-in-time checks to an ecosystem-wide model built on collaboration and foresight. Instead of after-the-fact fraud, defence is moving into predictive territory. In Asia Pacific, the surge in digital payments has made predictive protection an especially urgent challenge as fraud has scaled alongside rapid digital adoption.

The future lies in harnessing intelligence at speed and scale. Advanced AI, trained on reported fraud patterns and insights, can now help flag abnormal behaviour in milliseconds. By recognising early warning signs such as unusual behaviour, data anomalies, and new attack signatures, we can proactively cut threats off at the source, before money leaves a customer's account.

India has taken a leadership role in this area, with government agencies like the National Cyber Security Coordinator (NCSC) and CERT-In proactively strengthening the nation's digital defences. Their bulletins and rapid response mechanisms have played a pivotal role in safeguarding digital transactions and building consumer trust. Mastercard is proud to support and align with these efforts, working alongside Indian authorities and partners to ensure a secure digital payments ecosystem.

In short, the next frontier is foresight: staying one step ahead of increasingly sophisticated fraudsters.

How do you collaborate with industry partners, regulators, and cybersecurity communities to enhance the security of the payment ecosystem?
Fraud knows no borders, so our defences must be connected and agile across every payment form factor, channel, rail, and location. At Mastercard, we work closely with banks, governments, law enforcement, telecoms, and academia, sharing real-time threat intelligence and best practices across markets. For example, our partnership with the Global Anti-Scam Alliance and the Global Coalition Against Digital Scams brings together public and private sector leaders to coordinate defences and advocate for industry standards.

We invest in common standards and privacy-preserving mechanisms so that actionable intelligence can move quickly across the ecosystem. Since 2018, Mastercard has invested over $11 billion in AI and cybersecurity and helped launch more than 20 cyber startups, reflecting our belief that innovation thrives on collaboration.

In India, we're partnering with PayU to bring Brighterion AI to market, enabling real-time fraud risk assessment for both transactions and merchants. Platforms like Brighterion create self-learning models that flag behaviour indicative of fraud or money laundering and are continuously updated to better reflect the evolving nature of techniques and tools used by criminals. This ensures our defenses evolve as quickly as fraudsters do, embedding adaptive, AI-driven intelligence across the digital ecosystem.

We've also signed an MoU with CERT-In to strengthen cybersecurity in the financial sector through intelligence sharing and joint training.

Additionally, we support regulatory innovation to help future-proof India's digital payments ecosystem and build trust for all participants.

How is Mastercard embedding AI-powered security in digital ecosystems for real-time threat detection and collaborative intelligence?
At Mastercard, our role is to equip institutions with intelligence to anticipate threats, not just react to them. We've also invested heavily in technologies like generative AI (GenAI) that can predict compromised card details ahead of potential fraud, so issuers can block cards faster and protect consumers before losses occur.

Our technology stack supports this proactive approach. For example, Decision Intelligence Pro analyses relationships between transactions to identify potential fraud. Within 50 milliseconds or less, this technology delivers a 20-point uplift in fraud detection. Our Safety Net system prevented $20 billion in fraud losses globally in 2023 by identifying threats ahead of time.

With the introduction of payment passkeys in India, Mastercard is enabling password-free, biometric authentication at checkout, delivering a seamless experience while protecting consumers against account takeover and online fraud in one of the world's most dynamic digital payments markets.

Behavioural analytics adds an intelligent layer of defence that goes beyond static rules. At Mastercard, we apply this on a massive scale, analysing more than 143 billion transactions a year to build a baseline of legitimate behaviour and catch outliers in real-time. In some cases, this has improved detection rates by up to 300%. It allows us to tell the difference between a customer's shopping spree and a fraudster's shopping binge. And by ensuring people are who they claim to be at every interaction, we can prevent unauthorised transactions and give consumers and businesses greater peace of mind.

Agentic commerce is another paradigm shift. How is Mastercard securing the payment experience in times of intelligent transactions?
Agentic commerce, where AI agents transacting on behalf of consumers, is reshaping how people shop and pay. In this new landscape, privacy and security are fundamental. At Mastercard, we embed protections directly into the payment experience to safeguard data integrity and preserve trust.

Our Agent Pay solution is a great example: it builds authentication, trust, and consumer control directly into AI-initiated transactions, ensuring that digital agents are firstly registered and then verified when consumers want to use them for a specific purpose, such as looking for a good deal on sneakers or searching for a specific travel itinerary. These instructions are bound in “intent tokens” that ensure agents act transparently and within the parameters set by the customer. On the experience layer, our “Experience OS with Element” brings Mastercard's consumer consented prediction models and trusted payments intelligence into customer journeys, ensuring agentic experiences remain personalised and trusted, not just fast.

Consumers must remain empowered, with clear visibility and authority over how their agents transact on their behalf.

In India, as digital payments and AI-driven commerce accelerate, Mastercard is working closely with local partners to ensure that these intelligent transactions are secure and seamless as well as accountable and transparent. Our collaborations with fintechs and payment service providers help embed advanced authentication and fraud prevention tools into the Indian digital ecosystem, supporting both innovation and maintaining consumer trust.

Beyond technology, we're working with industry partners to establish privacy-first frameworks and common standards, so that agent-driven payments are not just secure within Mastercard's ecosystem, but across the entire financial landscape. This dual approach of embedding trust in design while shaping the rules of the road ensures that intelligent commerce can evolve without compromising on safety, privacy, or consumer confidence.

What strategies is Mastercard implementing to tackle the issue of chargebacks, ensuring fraud prevention, and from the perspective of customer experience? How are their occurrences minimised while securing legitimate payments?
Many payment card chargebacks today are caused by “friendly fraud”, where consumers dispute legitimate purchases due to confusion. For instance, when a family member uses the household's cable-TV account to order a pay-per-view sports event. This is a growing challenge for merchants and issuers worldwide, with global chargeback volumes expected to rise 24% by 2028.

The good news is that advanced security measures are making a difference. Where issuers have adopted solutions like tokenisation, biometric authentication, and passkeys, chargebacks have dropped significantly. Australia, for one, has seen notable declines in fraudulent disputes.

Our First-Party Trust Program also helps issuers and merchants confirm cardholder identity and spot first-party fraud, improving approval rates for genuine transactions.

In India, we're working with banks, fintechs, and payment providers to embed these best practices, helping reduce chargebacks and streamline dispute resolution as digital payments grow.

Finally, industry-wide collaboration, such as standardised digital receipts and AI-powered dispute resolution, ensures a smoother, more secure experience for both consumers and merchants.

According to you, what will be the biggest challenges and opportunities for payment security over the next decade?
As digital payments expand, so does the attack surface: more devices, AI-driven transactions, and cross-border flows mean more entry points for fraudsters. Staying ahead will require constant innovation, collaboration, and the constant evolution of security frameworks to maintain trust.

On the positive side, advances in AI and data analytics now allow us to detect suspicious activity in real time and share threat intelligence across borders. Mastercard is investing heavily in these technologies, as well as in quantum-resistant encryption and advanced threat intelligence, to raise the bar for digital trust.

India is at the forefront of this evolution. Rapid digital adoption has made it a proving ground for predictive AI security and collaborative intelligence. By deploying solutions like Brighterion AI and payment passkeys, we're helping balance growth and security in one of the world's fastest-growing digital markets.

Ultimately, trust is the foundation of the digital economy. Our goal is to secure every interaction, so people and businesses can connect and transact with confidence.

Source: EconomicTimes
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