The pan-European payment infrastructure, which runs the STEP2 and RT1 instant payment systems, has issued the specifications for its pan-European Fraud Pattern and Anomaly Detection (FPAD) functionality, alongside a developer portal, including a sandbox, to support users in the development and testing of FPAD’s application programming interfaces (APIs).Undertaken during the summer months, the data model exercise sought to identify fraud patterns in cooperation with users and to qualify anomalies based on their feedback.FPAD will cover a broad range of real-time fraud prevention and detection tools, including an Iban/name check, to support the fraud-fighting efforts of payment service providers (PSPs) across Europe. The tools will enable STEP2 and RT1 users to complement their individual risk view with insights on patterns and anomalies from a central infrastructure level perspective.Deployment will start with a post-transaction investigation feature as well as transaction and account risk assessment functions, which can be utilised by users before executing a transaction.Jaco Struik, global head fraud services at ING, comments: “We have been pleased to participate in the FPAD design and analytical pilot phases, because we believe FPAD can make a real difference for fraud combatting. It will feed us new insights that only a network view can provide, which will help us to better detect and prevent payment fraud going forward.”Raphael Barisaac, global head of payments & cash management at UniCredit, adds: “Instant payments are growing fast, so a higher level of security and better fraud fighting tools are needed. With FPAD, all banks from all over Europe are joining forces - with a systemic approach - to take fraud-fighting capabilities to the next level in the SEPA perimeter.”