Mastercard has launched Merchant Trust Services (MTS), a capability designed to help banks and payment providers identify and act on scam merchants earlier in the payment lifecycle, before consumers incur financial losses. The initiative was announced ahead of RiskX, Mastercard's cybersecurity, risk and innovation forum in Singapore.
The launch addresses a growing threat in digital commerce. According to industry estimates, consumers lost USD 442 billion globally to online scams in 2025. Generative AI has contributed to the problem by enabling fraudsters to create convincing fraudulent storefronts at scale, making detection more difficult at the point of onboarding and during ongoing transaction monitoring.
Capabilities and detection approach
MTS combines Mastercard's network intelligence, cyber and identity capabilities, and real-time analytics to distinguish legitimate merchants from high-risk ones across both the onboarding stage and the merchant lifecycle. The service builds a dynamic trust profile of merchants by incorporating network and external digital signals.
Key capabilities include early detection of scam merchants during onboarding or early in their lifecycle, and the Merchant Scam and Risk Indicator (MSRI), which provides issuers with real-time risk signals at the point of transaction to enable proactive fraud mitigation. In pilot testing, MSRI identified approximately 80% of issuer-flagged high-risk merchants, in some cases up to 90 days earlier than would otherwise have been possible. Updated standards introduced alongside the service will require acquirers and payment service providers to investigate suspicious activity within 72 hours of it reaching defined thresholds.
Regional focus and industry context
The announcement is particularly relevant for the Asia Pacific, where rapid growth in digital commerce and new merchant adoption is expanding the attack surface for scam activity. The region's pace of digital commerce development has made it a priority market for both legitimate merchant growth and fraudulent operator activity.
The launch reflects a broader industry challenge: as the number of merchants operating through digital channels grows, the ability of acquirers and payment service providers to screen them effectively at scale becomes a critical component of payment security. Traditional onboarding checks are increasingly insufficient against AI-generated fraudulent storefronts that can mimic the characteristics of legitimate businesses. By introducing real-time risk signals at the transaction level alongside onboarding-stage detection, MTS is designed to create multiple intervention points across the merchant lifecycle rather than relying on a single point of review.
For issuers, access to real-time merchant risk signals at the point of transaction addresses a gap in current fraud prevention frameworks, which have historically focused more on cardholder behaviour than on the risk profile of the merchant receiving payment. The 72-hour investigation requirement introduces a defined response standard that will apply across the network, creating greater consistency in how suspicious merchant activity is handled by acquirers and payment service providers.
