Marqeta Launches Risk Management Tools to Help Its Issuers Defend Against Fraud

To help its card-issuing clients keep pace with evolving risk-management and compliance issues, virtual-card issuing platform Marqeta Inc. on Thursday introduced RiskControl, a suite of risk-management, fraud-mitigation, and compliance tools it says are aimed at allowing issuers on its platform to get ahead of fraud and streamline their risk and compliance programs.

The cornerstone of the new risk-management suite is Real-Time Decisioning, a module that allows issuers on Marqeta’s platform to create and implement rules that govern how, when, and where cards are used. For example, a card issuer can create a rule that places a per-transaction spending limit on specific cardholders when they are shopping at designated merchant locations or within certain merchant categories. The rules can be created within minutes, which Marqeta says will enable issuers to quickly get out in front of emerging fraud threats or drive certain cardholder behavior.

“Real-Time Decisioning, within the RiskControl suite will help our customers have more control over which transactions are approved or declined, and alter them to find an appropriate balance of risk vs. customer experience,” a Marqeta spokesperson says by email. “[Issuers] can measure the performance of each RiskControl Real Time Decisioning rule in terms of false-positive rates. If certain rules are not performing up to par, they can be adjusted to lower the rate of false positives generated.”

Developed in partnership with Featurespace, a provider of machine learning-based fraud-detection and financial-crime prevention tools, Real-Time Decisioning is being beta-tested with select Marqeta customers and is expected to be widely available later this year.

In addition to Real-Time Decisioning, Marqeta has enhanced its Know Your Customer and Disputes tools, as well 3D Secure. 

Enhancements to Know Your Customer—which is aimed at providing identity-verification capabilities designed to meet compliance requirements, and is intended to help block fraudsters and allow businesses to onboard cardholders with minimal friction—include an improved pass rate to allow faster onboarding of new cardholders. Marqeta has also expanded its stable of partners that provide identity-verification technology.

Enhancements to Marqeta’s Disputes tool will give issuers more control over creating, submitting, and managing disputes and chargebacks directly within Marqeta’s dashboard. Enhanced application programming interfaces are being piloted and are expected to be generally available later this year. 

Marqeta’s 3D Secure tool allows issuers to create tailored authentication for online transactions by leveraging their own business logic and data to mitigate fraud.

“3D Secure continues to improve since our initial launch by building for additional scale to take on more volume as well as improving our advanced authorization features to meet [European Union] regulatory requirements,” the spokesperson says.

The RiskControl suite will be made available to issuers as a full package or as individual modules, depending on the use case and needs of the issuer. Issuers can access Risk Control through Marqeta’s dashboard or via APIs.