SAN FRANCISCO – Visa USA has joined with eFunds to offer credit union card issuers another layer of fraud protection. The eFunds DDA Fraud Screen, provided by Visa only to its issuers, essentially allows Visa issuers to check Visa credit and debit card applications and change of address requests against an "enhanced" database which will include information variables like address, phone numbers, bankruptcy information and related checking account fraud information from eFunds. "Losses due to account application fraud, account takeover, and identity theft are critical challenges for card issuers to address," said Rahul Gupta, senior vice president and division executive at eFunds. "By adding fraudulent checking account information to Visa's risk management services, Visa's members will have access to enhanced data and new capabilities to improve their decisions and reduce fraud losses." In a recent study with three U.S. member financial institutions, the new service could have prevented an estimated 23.5% of their total fraud and charge-off losses, Visa reported. This improvement was above and beyond existing fraud and risk management solutions in place at the time of origination. The addition of checking account industry fraud data on balance provided in this study a nearly 50% increase in detection performance. Furthermore, based on this study, it is anticipated that a net benefit of up to $500 can be realized for every $1 in alert expense. Robert Hill, a vice president at eFunds, explained that the new service, which will carry a small fee every time it generates an alert, will help credit unions in two ways. It will allow them to have access to a larger database of known fraud incidents and it will enable credit unions to have an additional window into transactions that they would otherwise lack. A credit union might get an application to change an address on a credit card account, Hill explains. With the eFunds database, the credit union could be alerted to the fact that another credit union also received a request to change the address on a card account – to the same address that the first credit union received. "Using the same address for multiple card accounts is a common fraud technique and one that we can help protect against." Hill said.