Bermudians are expected to benefit from a new, regional strategic partnership between Mastercard and Vesta, a leading end-to-end fraud prevention platform for digital purchases, the companies have announced.

The initiative seeks to broaden protection for merchants, while improving the consumer e-commerce experience, starting early in the new year.

The companies said they would provide a state-of-the-art fraud management platform for merchants across Latin America and the Caribbean, as of the first quarter of 2023.

With runaway growth in online shopping, merchants are challenged to verify identities and manage evolving fraud threats in real time.

The two organisations are joining forces to not only meet merchants’ security needs but also address a broader effort to enhance the consumer’s digital experience and strengthen their trust in e-commerce.

The companies said: “The fraud management solutions resulting from this collaboration will unite resources from each organisation. This includes Vesta’s real-time anomaly detection and response, extensive global consortium data and best-in-class machine learning decisioning tools with the added strategic capabilities of Mastercard Cyber and Intelligence solutions.

“Together, they will provide full protection, before, during, and after a transaction for Mastercard merchants and consumers worldwide.

“Using the combination of the solutions and market expertise, the partnership will provide merchants 100 per cent fraud chargeback protection and will also incorporate numerous transactional insights like payment risk scores and pre-emptive chargeback alerts.”

Ron Hynes, the Vesta CEO said: “We are excited about this new partnership with Mastercard. Our combined ability to help digital merchants across the network positively impact revenues with zero-risk decisioning in real time is a game-changer.

“Too often, merchants lose legitimate customers and revenue simply due to a lack of available information, insufficient analysis and overly strict fraud prevention, causing e-commerce retailers to decline good customer transactions because of the fear of fraud.”

Jorge Arbesu, the senior vice-president, partnerships, cyber and intelligence at Mastercard, added: “Our partnership with Vesta is the next step in our journey to make the digital economy safer, more seamless and secure.

“Adding to our existing capabilities, this partnership simplifies risk management for merchants while offering a better consumer experience.”