TASHKENT, Uzbekistan,
August 24. Financial institutions need to
strengthen fraud prevention while ensuring that security measures
do not undermine the customer experience, Yevgen Lisnyak, Vice
President and Head of Strategic Partnerships, Fintech, Acquiring &
Merchants for the CISSEE region at Visa, said, Trend’s special correspondent
reports from Tashkent.
He made the remark while speaking at the Silk Road Finance &
Technology Forum.
According to Lisnyak, fraudsters are constantly adapting to
technological developments and new security measures, making fraud
prevention an ongoing process that requires both awareness and
proactive action. “The turning point, and where we need to pay
attention always, is to be informed and to be aware of what's going
on with them, to be able to protect from them. This is first of all
some kind of preemption. And the second is, of course, proaction,”
Lisnyak said.
He noted that proactive protection requires financial
institutions to maintain robust anti-money laundering (AML) and
know-your-customer (KYC) systems. At the same time, he stressed the
importance of avoiding excessive security barriers that could make
digital financial services unnecessarily complicated for customers.
“If we build too many walls, people will not go through it. And
this is also this challenging task — to be secured from one way,
but also keeping the customer experience smooth and seamless from
the other side,” he said.
Lisnyak said Visa works with its partners to address both
aspects, using technologies including artificial intelligence to
identify and anticipate fraudulent activity.
He noted that information on fraud attempts detected in
different markets can be used to help protect financial
institutions in other countries. “We collect all the fraud attempts
across the world and actually bring it here to Uzbekistan and say,
‘Hey guys, there is in Colombia such type of fraudsters who is
trying to cheat you. Here is the rule that will protect you,’” he
said.
According to Lisnyak, the global scale of payment networks
allows information about emerging fraud patterns to be shared
across markets, helping local financial institutions strengthen
their defenses.
At the same time, he emphasized that not all fraud results from
weaknesses in technological security, with social engineering and
human behavior also playing a significant role. “Plenty of frauds
happen not with broken security level, but because of social
engineering, just because of people,” Lisnyak said.
In this regard, he highlighted the importance of financial
literacy initiatives and cooperation with regulators and central
banks.
He said Visa has been working with the Central Bank of
Uzbekistan and other partners on financial literacy programs,
noting that educating consumers can serve as an additional layer of
protection against fraud. “We believe that we need to work on this
layer too,” Lisnyak said.
