Reap has launched Reap Sentry, a managed card fraud and risk service designed to give businesses an end-to-end fraud-management function without requiring them to build separate monitoring infrastructure or hire a dedicated fraud operations team.
Reap moves card fraud management into its issuing infrastructure
Reap is expanding its card-issuing infrastructure with a managed fraud service aimed at companies that want to launch and operate payment card programmes without building a separate fraud-management function.
The financial technology company has introduced Reap Sentry, which manages transaction risk from authorization screening through fraud investigation, chargebacks and reporting.
The service is built into Reap’s existing card-issuing technology and is available to new Reap card-issuing customers as well as existing customers at contract renewal.
For fintechs and businesses issuing cards, the proposition addresses a recurring operational challenge: fraud controls have to be active from the moment a card programme begins, while fraud patterns and attack methods continue to change after launch.
Reap says Sentry allows customers to access fraud rules, transaction screening, investigations and chargeback operations through a single service and API.
Card fraud remains a large payments infrastructure problem
The scale of card payments makes fraud prevention a core component of Digital Payments Platforms rather than an optional security layer.
According to the Nilson Report, global payment cards generated $51.920 trillion in combined purchase and cash volume during 2024. Gross card fraud losses incurred by issuers, merchants and acquirers reached $33.41 billion that year.
That works out to roughly 6.4 cents in fraud losses for every $100 of global card volume.
The challenge is not limited to identifying suspicious transactions after they occur. Fraud decisions often have to be made while an authorization is being processed.
Visa’s current fraud-prevention products, for example, use real-time risk scoring and transaction data to help issuers identify potentially fraudulent payments during authorization. Its Visa Protect suite includes capabilities that can evaluate hundreds of transaction attributes and apply configurable rules to payment decisions.
Reap is taking a similar real-time approach within the card programmes it operates, while adding the human operational layer needed after an alert is generated.
Sentry combines technology and fraud operations
Reap Sentry is designed to cover several stages of the fraud lifecycle.
The service can configure fraud policies, screen authorizations in real time, decline transactions considered suspicious, triage alerts and investigate potential fraud. Reap also says it manages chargeback processing and represents chargebacks submitted by clients, reports confirmed fraud to Visa and provides programme performance reporting.
The controls are intended to evolve with each card programme.
Reap says its fraud controls are informed by patterns observed across its card-issuing portfolio and are tailored to individual programmes based on factors including cardholder segments, geographic exposure and the client’s risk appetite.
The company says it has issued millions of cards over eight years, providing the transaction history and operational experience behind Sentry.
That portfolio-level approach is important because fraud controls cannot simply be copied from one card programme to another. A corporate card programme, consumer prepaid product and cross-border business card can have very different transaction patterns and risk profiles.
The API becomes the entry point for fraud management
Sentry is available through a single Reap API, allowing clients to integrate the service without licensing a separate fraud-monitoring platform.
That architecture fits the broader development of Embedded Finance Infrastructure, where specialized financial capabilities are increasingly delivered through APIs and integrated directly into business platforms.
For card issuers, the potential benefit is operational rather than simply technical. A company launching cards does not have to assemble separate fraud-detection software, investigation workflows, chargeback operations and reporting processes before it can operate the programme.
Instead, those functions become part of the issuing infrastructure.
This model is particularly relevant to fintech startups and businesses that want to launch cards without developing the full operational stack traditionally associated with issuing.
However, Reap is not taking responsibility for every source of fraud.
The company says Sentry protects the authorization layer it operates and observes, while customers remain responsible for the cardholder relationship and first-party fraud entry points, including onboarding, identity verification and account access.
That distinction matters because fraudulent activity can originate before a transaction reaches the authorization stage. Compromised accounts, synthetic identities and fraudulent onboarding can bypass transaction-level controls if the underlying customer relationship is not properly secured.
Fraud threats are shifting beyond stolen card data
The fraud environment is also becoming more complicated as criminals adapt their techniques.
Visa’s Spring 2026 Biannual Threats Report said scams had become the fastest-growing source of consumer harm in its monitored ecosystem, with Visa identifying nearly $1 billion in scam-related activity from July through December 2025. The company said criminals were increasingly using AI-enabled social engineering to persuade victims to authorize payments themselves rather than relying only on technical compromises.
That trend creates a limitation for authorization-layer fraud systems: not every fraudulent payment looks suspicious from the perspective of a transaction engine if the legitimate cardholder is the person authorizing it.
Reap’s model therefore sits within a larger fraud-management stack rather than replacing identity verification, account security or customer education.
For fintechs, the distinction between transaction fraud, account takeover, identity fraud and authorized scams is becoming increasingly important as they design controls.
Managed fraud becomes part of card-issuing infrastructure
Reap’s Sentry launch also reflects a broader shift in financial technology toward managed infrastructure.
Fintechs increasingly want to outsource specialized functions—payments processing, compliance, foreign exchange, card issuing and fraud operations—to infrastructure providers rather than building every component internally.
For Fintech Startup Ecosystem companies, this can shorten the path from product design to deployment. But it also creates a greater dependence on the infrastructure provider’s controls, data and operational processes.
Reap’s proposition is that fraud management should evolve alongside the card programme rather than remain a fixed implementation completed before launch.
The company says Sentry continuously updates controls as new threats emerge, including BIN attacks and merchant breaches.
That makes continuous monitoring the central proposition: fraud prevention is treated as an operating function that changes with the programme, rather than a one-time technology deployment.
For Banking Technology Innovation, the development illustrates how fraud management is becoming embedded deeper into payment infrastructure. As card programmes become easier for fintechs and businesses to launch, the ability to provide scalable authorization controls and fraud operations becomes increasingly important to the economics and resilience of those programmes.
Market Landscape
Global card fraud remains a significant payments-industry cost. Nilson Report data shows $33.41 billion in worldwide card fraud losses during 2024 against $51.920 trillion in total card volume.
At the same time, fraud techniques are evolving. Visa reported that scams became its fastest-growing category of consumer payment fraud during the second half of 2025, while AI-enabled social engineering increasingly shifted attacks toward manipulating legitimate users rather than directly compromising payment systems.
This is increasing demand for layered fraud infrastructure that combines real-time authorization controls, identity protection, transaction monitoring, investigation and post-transaction recovery.
Top Insights
- Reap Sentry provides managed fraud rules, real-time authorization screening, investigations, chargebacks and fraud reporting through Reap’s card infrastructure.
- The service is designed to eliminate the need for clients to build separate fraud-monitoring technology or hire dedicated fraud operations teams.
- Nilson Report recorded $33.41 billion in worldwide card fraud losses in 2024 against $51.920 trillion in total card volume.
- Reap says Sentry’s controls are tailored to individual card programmes and continuously updated as new fraud patterns emerge.
- Customers remain responsible for onboarding, identity verification, account access and other first-party fraud entry points outside Reap’s authorization layer.
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