Mastercard is rolling out A2A Protect in the UK, a new service designed to help banks protect consumers from account-to-account payment fraud and resolve disputes. Mastercard A2A Protect will initially focus on the most acute needs, such as Authorised Push Payment fraud, providing a combination of preventative measures, consumer protections and a process to recover funds. Subsequent phases will establish a process for recovering funds across a broader range of scenarios, including where goods and services have been paid for. In the UK last year £592 million was lost to Account-to-Account fraud. The Payment Systems Regulator has also taken steps to address the concern, introducing a 50:50 liability model for APP fraud. Mastercard says A2A Protect will deliver an industry-wide standardised fraud and loss reporting mechanism alongside a simple framework and set of multilateral standards addressing transactional and fraud protection issues, as well as goods and services protection issues, where relevant for consumers. The product also features a uniform procedure for banks to resolve disputes and recover funds, across multiple use cases via Mastercard’s existing centralised platform. Jorn Lambert, chief product officer at Mastercard said “It lowers operational costs for financial institutions through standardised real-time fraud insights and streamlined dispute resolution, and all participants benefit from quicker and more predictable outcomes.”