Acquirers monetize fraud intelligence with AI services

Acquirers are turning fraud intelligence into a revenue source by selling AI-driven prevention and dispute services after merchants began weighting fraud metrics in procurement.

Merchants now consider false-positive rates and chargeback handling alongside price when selecting an acquirer. The Merchant Risk Council found that in 2026 about 65% of merchants estimate their e-commerce false-positive rates fall between 2% and 10%.

Global losses from wrongly declined transactions are projected to reach $231 billion in 2026, while projected card fraud losses are $39.6 billion for the same year.

Regulatory and card-scheme scrutiny of acquirers has risen. Visa updated its Acquirer Monitoring Program in April 2026, lowering the combined fraud-and-dispute ratio threshold from 220 to 150. The VAMP ratio is calculated by dividing combined fraud and dispute counts by total settled Visa transactions.

In response, acquirers are packaging tools that were previously run as internal cost centres. Offerings include AI-powered real-time decisioning across channels and payment types, outsourced dispute management that handles chargebacks for merchants, and identity checks using digital ID and network intelligence. Some providers add explainability features so merchants and regulators can see why a transaction was blocked or approved.

Operational changes aim to reduce false positives without raising fraud losses. Approaches include tuning rules and models to approve more legitimate transactions, automating case handling, improving data sharing between issuers and merchants, and deploying machine-learning models that adapt to shifting fraud patterns.

Lowering false positives and handling chargebacks more efficiently can increase merchant conversion rates and margins while reducing compliance risk. Merchants increasingly include those outcomes in request-for-proposal evaluations, making fraud performance a factor in competitive bids.

Industry groups and payments firms are discussing these trends at sector events and panels that address the changing regulatory landscape, explainable AI for compliance, and how acquirers can package fraud prevention as a commercial service.