Visa, a digital payments processor, announced new measures to strengthen scam disruption in the Philippines as fraud shifts from SMS scams to phishing, online card fraud, and account takeovers. The move follows its recent Risk Forum, where the company engaged media and industry partners on emerging fraud trends and ways to secure the country’s digital payments ecosystem.
As digital payments grow, scammers are moving from simple SMS lures to methods targeting online credentials, ecommerce transactions, and real-time payments. Visa’s Biannual Threats Report showed a 41% rise in ransomware incidents affecting payments in the first half of 2025. In Asia Pacific, the region accounted for 67% of global scam losses in 2023, with the Philippines recording a 13.4% suspected digital fraud rate, above the global average.
Visa’s Visa Scam Disruption (VSD) program has stopped more than $1 billion in attempted scams and dismantled over 25,000 scam-linked merchants. Operating under Visa’s Payment Ecosystem Risk and Control group, VSD combines intelligence, investigations, detection models, and partnerships as part of Visa’s $13 billion investment over five years in fraud prevention and network security.
“Protecting Filipinos from fraud is at the center of our work, and this means going beyond detection,” said Jeffrey Navarro, Visa Country Manager for the Philippines. “We are strengthening scam disruption across the ecosystem, from issuing banks and acquirers to fintechs and regulators, so we can stop scams earlier and protect consumers before money moves.”
Navarro also noted that Visa is investing in stronger authentication, expanding tokenization, deploying AI-powered anomaly detection, and sharing intelligence in real time with partners.
“As scams increasingly target online payments, Visa’s role is not just to react, but to help raise the security bar for the entire industry so Filipinos can pay and be paid with confidence,” he said.
Visa also supports Philippine banks with tokenization, biometric authentication, device-bound passkeys, and AI-powered anomaly detection. Republic Act 12010, the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act, also allows Visa to share intelligence instantly with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, improving real-time fraud reporting and controls.