Visa has agreed to pay $2.4 billion in cash for BioCatch, a Tel Aviv company whose software scores online banking sessions for signs of fraud by reading how people type, tap and handle their devices. The announcement came on August 3, with the business changing hands from funds advised by private equity firm Permira and other shareholders.
The acquisition zeroes in on fraud that credentials alone cannot catch: account takeover, scams, money mules and application fraud. In these schemes the login is legitimate and the accountholder is real, which is precisely what defeats systems built only to answer whether the right person is on the account. The scoring runs continuously through a session, assessing intent and any hint of coercion or manipulation, with risk signals sharpened by data shared across Visa’s network of institutions, the company says.
BioCatch’s reach sits inside banks rather than on the card network. Visa says the company protects 1.8 billion devices and 760 million users, works with more than 350 banking clients across 21 countries, and reviews 19 billion sessions every month.
The purchase follows Visa’s December 2024 takeover of Featurespace, which monitors payment events rather than the people behind them, and both now sit in the value-added services business run by Andrew Torre. He put the stakes plainly, saying account takeovers and scams cost the global economy over $1 trillion annually and that AI is powering the attacks at unprecedented scale.
