Global payments company Mastercard has announced the launch of Early Detection System, a new service that provides issuers with an advanced alert for cards and accounts at a heightened risk of fraudulent use, based on their exposure in security incidents or data breaches.

The business of stolen data is in the news daily and thieves are getting faster every day. In September 2017, 143 million identities were reported as compromised in one data breach, and it can take as little as nine minutes for stolen data posted to the dark web to be used.

Mastercard said it developed Early Detection System to help financial institutions take action faster relating to incidents of fraud, thus helping them pre-empt more serious attacks.

Using Mastercard network insights, predictive capabilities and a combination of internal and external data sources, Early Detection System determines if a card or account is at risk and sends an alert to the issuer with a quantification of the level of risk.

The issuer then uses the level of risk to more accurately prioritise what action to take – from monitoring transactions more closely to proactively issuing a replacement card.

“Knowledge is power, and this service helps issuers act significantly faster and with greater precision to stop potential fraud before it occurs,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard.

“Our issuers can now proactively target the fraudulent activity resulting from previously breached or hacked data, helping them reduce costs and maintain the best possible cardholder experience.”

Early Detection System is available to issuers globally and captures all types of fraud across all transaction channels. The system identifies everything from active criminal trading of account data, to identification of cards being tested prior to being used for fraud, to account data that appears at-risk but without sufficient evidence to declare an Account Data Compromise event.

This provides issuers with alerts on a much broader set of at-risk accounts potentially 6 to 18 months ahead of traditional alerts.