Disputes are no longer just a back-office issue, said Shane Malloy, vice president of Value Added Services at Visa DPS. Visa DPS sees artificial intelligence (AI) as key to changing the game. “AI is really going to allow us to shift dispute [management] from being a really more of a reactive approach … to more of a proactive approach,” Malloy said. AI can triage cases, help with proper classification, and route them to the right teams. Visa DPS is also helping issuers flag recoverable cases and automate evidence gathering to reduce unnecessary write-offs. “Every inquiry that we have is an opportunity for us to help recover value for our issuers, reinforce trust and the AI aspect of that now makes that really scalable,” Malloy said. Malloy points to agentic AI as particularly powerful. Disputes involve unstructured data, multiple intake channels, and regulatory deadlines, making them ideal for automation that goes beyond simple fraud scoring. Use cases include auto-classification, evidence validation, and predicting the likelihood of resolution. “Technology’s allowing us to do things on the Visa DPS side to help clients as far as automating the documentation they need, to detect anomalies … and maintain those audit trails,” Malloy said. He advised issuers to look for AI-first partners who can connect the entire customer journey, from fraud alerts to digital card issuance. “Make sure as you’re doing this, you’re working with partners that have that connectivity that you can connect the customer journey end to end,” he said. Ultimately, Visa DPS aims to resolve disputes as quickly as possible.