Visa to acquire behavioural-biometrics firm BioCatch for $2.4bn in cash

Visa agreed to acquire BioCatch, the Tel Aviv-based behavioural-biometrics company, for $2.4bn in cash from funds advised by Permira and other shareholders. BioCatch analyses keystroke patterns, touch gestures, device handling and network signals during digital banking sessions to identify account takeover, scams and coercion before a payment is initiated.

It protects 1.8 billion devices and 760 million users, serves more than 350 banking clients across 21 countries including over 100 of the world's largest banks, and analyses roughly 19 billion user sessions a month. Permira took control of BioCatch about two years ago at a $1.3bn valuation. Andrew Torre, Visa's president of value-added services, said BioCatch 'will help our clients stop fraud before it reaches the point of payment'. The deal is expected to close by the end of Visa's fiscal second quarter of 2027.

Visa's value-added services are its fastest-growing revenue line and the part of its business least constrained by interchange regulation, so a $2.4bn cash purchase signals how much of future scheme revenue is meant to come from risk tooling rather than transaction fees. For European acquirers and PSPs that resell Visa risk products, a scheme that now owns pre-transaction behavioural signals moves further up the value chain into territory currently served by independent vendors and by acquirers' own fraud stacks.

It also lands while the European Commission is probing Visa and Mastercard scheme fees and while PSD3/PSR sharpens liability for authorised push payment fraud, which makes bank-side fraud intelligence a regulatory as well as a commercial asset.

Whether European acquirers keep buying third-party behavioural analytics once the signal sits inside Visa, and whether the Commission's scheme-fee inquiry reaches how risk services are bundled and priced alongside network access.

• investor.visa.com
• CNBC
• BioCatch