Rebecca PY Mastercard has unveiled Merchant Trust Services, a new initiative leveraging network-wide intelligence and real-time analytics to identify and stop fraudulent merchants before they can harm consumers or businesses. The company is also launching the Merchant Scam and Risk Indicator, a tool that flags risky merchants during payment authorisation, having already detected around 80 percent of identified risky merchants in an early pilot.
MALAYSIA, 20 MAY 2026 – When the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe in 2020, it did not take long for criminals to follow. Fake online storefronts selling non-existent tests, vaccines and cures flooded search results and social media feeds, complete with working checkout buttons designed to steal money and card details. That wave of fraud never fully receded, and today generative AI has made the threat significantly more dangerous, enabling scammers to create convincing deepfake testimonials, professional-grade websites and highly targeted ads at scale.
The consequences are staggering. Consumers lost an estimated 442 billion dollars worldwide to online scams in 2024, according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance. These fake storefronts do not merely take money and vanish. Many operate as phishing operations, harvesting card data that is then used for further fraudulent transactions or sold on the dark web.
In response, Mastercard has announced Merchant Trust Services, a comprehensive strategy that draws on the company’s global network intelligence, cybersecurity capabilities and real-time analytics to help financial institutions distinguish legitimate merchants from fraudulent ones, both online and in physical stores. The initiative was unveiled ahead of RiskX, Mastercard’s cybersecurity and risk innovation forum held in Singapore.
The service is designed to support acquirers, the banks responsible for onboarding merchants, by identifying suspicious operators before they can begin processing payments. This addresses a long-standing gap in the payment ecosystem, where traditional fraud signals often arrive too late and the sheer volume of new merchant applications makes thorough vetting difficult.
Alongside Merchant Trust Services, Mastercard is launching the Merchant Scam and Risk Indicator, a tool that delivers real-time merchant risk signals to issuers at the point of authorisation. In a pilot with a major issuer, the indicator successfully detected approximately 80 percent of flagged risky merchants, with many identified up to 90 days before the issuer had escalated concerns internally. The tool will roll out first across Europe and the United States, with a global expansion planned before the end of the year.
Ann Johnson, Executive Vice President of Security Solutions at Mastercard, stressed that the integrity of digital commerce hinges on consumer confidence, warning that allowing scammers to masquerade as legitimate businesses erodes trust across the entire ecosystem. Simon Collins, Mastercard’s Chief Franchise Officer, added that every negative online experience pushes shoppers to hesitate even when dealing with genuine merchants, ultimately driving up declines, disputes and abandoned transactions for honest businesses.