SAN FRANCISCO – Yesterday, Visa Inc. reported results of its Visa Transaction Advisor (VTA) service to help reduce fraud at the gas pump. According to Visa, more than 35,000 gas stations in the United States are actively using the service. On average, VTA users have experienced a 54% decline in counterfeit fraud rates and a 51% decline in lost and stolen fraud chargeback rates.

As more retailers adopt EMV, fuel retailers are working to upgrade their fuel dispensers to accept EMV chip card technology by the October 2017 liability shift—an estimated $4 billion expense for the convenience and fuel retailing industry. Visa says that its VTA service can help merchants identify and block high-risk transactions before they are processed.

“For the many retailers unable to meet the aggressive EMV liability shift deadline, real-time risk scoring might buy some breathing room and protection from the onslaught of chargebacks after October 2017,” Gray Taylor, executive director of Conexxus, told NACS Daily.

Here’s how VTA works: After a cardholder inserts the card at the pump, Visa analyzes multiple data sets, such as past transactions, whether the account has been involved in a data compromise, and nearly 500 other pieces of data to create a risk score within milliseconds. This allows merchants to identify transactions that carry a higher risk of fraud and perform further cardholder authentication before the pump is activated. Visa research suggests that when a thief is prompted to go inside the store to complete a transaction, they will typically drive away.

Visa’s service analyzes more than 76 million transactions each month. The company has also partnered with a number of U.S. acquirers to deliver the service and can also work directly with merchants to implement VTA as part of their fraud management system.