How Cartes Bancaires and Worldline built a strong foundation against fraud

05 / 11 / 2026

Using device intelligence to strengthen fraud detection while keeping card payments fluid.

1 min.

Worldline Payment Fraud Management Financial institutions

France’s domestic card scheme, Cartes Bancaires (CB), sits at the heart of everyday payments. It has more than 77 million active cards and processes around 15 billion transactions last year, covering roughly two-thirds of French people’s everyday spending.

As online payments become more secure, fraudsters are increasingly targeting people rather than payment systems. CB partnered with Worldline to enrich its fraud detection with device intelligence, helping identify risk while preserving a smooth cardholder experience.

The challenge: fraud is shifting beyond the transaction

Security measures have delivered significant results. In France, domestic card-payment fraud rates fell by 33% between 2020 and 2024. With 3D Secure now widely used, however, fraudsters are shifting towards manipulation: persuading cardholders to authenticate payments initiated by someone else.

Artificial intelligence has made phishing and social engineering easier to scale across languages and borders. In these cases, transaction data alone may not tell the whole story. CB wanted to understand more about the device initiating a payment and use that information to strengthen its fraud detection.

At the same time, security cannot come at the expense of the payment experience. The goal is to prevent fraud while keeping legitimate payments as frictionless as possible.

The solution: enriching fraud scoring with device intelligence

CB and Worldline worked together to add relevant device indicators to CB’s fraud detection capabilities. These signals provide additional context about the device used to initiate a transaction, enriching the data available to CB’s scoring engine.

The collaboration followed a data-driven approach:

CB selected and anonymised risky transactions for analysis.
Worldline calculated device indicators for those transactions.
The teams assessed whether the indicators could improve fraud detection.
After the pilot results were confirmed against live data, CB integrated the indicators into its live fraud system.

The indicators complement CB’s FAST'R service, which combines a directory server and scoring engine. For each authentication, the scoring engine provides the issuer with a recommendation on whether to proceed frictionlessly or request strong customer authentication (SCA).

“Our mission is to prevent fraud, but also to keep payments as fluid as possible.”

Samuel, Head of Fraud Prevention, Cartes Bancaires

The impact: stronger detection without unnecessary friction

The new device indicators helped CB reduce fraud on SCA-authenticated payments by 10%: a significant improvement in an area where fraud is particularly difficult to detect.

The results build on broader progress in CB’s fraud prevention. CB reports that online payment fraud rates fell by more than 50% over the past year, alongside the use of its FAST'R service. Its scoring also supports frictionless authentication: CB reports fraud rates on frictionless payments are 50% lower than on payments requiring SCA.

These results demonstrate the value of combining richer data with established fraud detection expertise, not only to identify more fraud, but to make better decisions about when additional authentication is needed.

Building the next generation of fraud prevention

CB plans to continue expanding the data available to its fraud platform, including further device indicators and information based on past fraud. As a national scheme with a cross-market view, CB believes this can help issuers and acquirers improve their ability to detect fraud.

The organisation is also exploring new approaches to fraud detection algorithms, building on established machine-learning methods.

The CB–Worldline collaboration shows how device intelligence can help payment schemes respond to evolving threats. By strengthening fraud detection while keeping payments fluid, the partnership is helping lay the groundwork for more secure, convenient payments.