Bank of Ireland reduces fraud losses 25% and false positives 87.1% with Featurespace AI

Bank of Ireland, one of Ireland's largest retail banks, achieved a 25% reduction in customer losses from payment fraud and an 87.1% drop in false positives after rolling out Visa's Featurespace AI-led pattern recognition platform across its payment fraud detection and prevention systems. Since adopting Featurespace in 2024, the bank has also seen a 30% decline in attempted fraud, an 85% decline in alert volumes, and a 50% reduction in case handling time, freeing investigators to focus on higher-risk transactions. The Featurespace platform uses AI and machine learning to model how accounts are typically used, helping the bank identify potentially suspicious behaviour earlier while reducing unnecessary alerts that can delay legitimate payments. According to Nicola Sadlier, head of fraud protection at Bank of Ireland, the technology has transformed the bank's payment fraud detection: 'Combining the latest AI-powered technology through the Featurespace platform with our fraud expertise has transformed our payment fraud detection and prevention. Along with significantly reducing payment fraud losses, we've been able to do so in a way that's simple, seamless and effective for customers.' Nine in 10 (90%) customers can now confirm genuine transactions without contacting the bank. The deployment has received global recognition through Celent's 2026 Model Risk Manager Award, marking it as industry best practice and setting a benchmark for future fraud resilience. James Mirfin, SVP and head of risk and security intelligence at Visa, said the partnership proves 'what's possible when banks move beyond static controls, to real-time intelligent decisioning.' Bank of Ireland's deployment is now positioned as a reference case for AI-led transaction monitoring in European retail banking.