Visa launches mobile location service to cut declined card payments

In an effort to cut unnecessary purchase declines, Visa is set to start identifying cardholders when they make purchases on their travels through mobile phone geo-location data.

Visa estimates that issuing financial institutions spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually to manage customer service calls related to pre-travel requests and to research declined transactions.

To tackle the problem, the card giant is now working with specialist outfit Finsphere to get an analysis of account holders’ device location data, which is then matched with the transaction location in less than a millisecond.

The new service will be offered to US card issuers from April. Customers will then be able to opt in through their bank app. Visa claims that its offering could slash the number of unnecessary declines by as much as 30%.

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