European Investor
22 Oct 2026, 15:54
Broadcom Launches Arcot Scam Defense to Block Social Engineering Fraud in Card Payments
Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) launched Arcot Scam Defense, a new payment-security capability designed to detect and block social engineering fraud during card-not-present transactions, even after a customer successfully completes authentication.
The product targets a growing fraud gap in which legitimate cardholders are manipulated by scammers into revealing credentials or approving one-time passwords and biometric challenges. Because traditional 3-D Secure systems often treat a successfully authenticated transaction as legitimate, those payments can pass through despite the cardholder being under the influence of a scam.
Arcot Scam Defense adds a second real-time risk layer after authentication. Broadcom said the system evaluates transaction data, device intelligence, historical behavior and details of the authentication interaction itself to identify patterns associated with social engineering.
Signals can include differences between the checkout and authentication devices, delayed OTP entry, use of an alternative authentication method, unusually large physical distance between devices and, through third-party integrations, whether the authenticating device is on an active phone call.
Broadcom said the platform evaluates these signals collectively rather than relying on a single indicator, allowing it to detect behavioral shifts even when the customer has voluntarily completed the authentication process.
The company cited pilot testing in which reviewing only the riskiest 1% of successfully authenticated challenges at one major issuer would have prevented an estimated $4 million in fraud in a single month, while reducing authentication success by just 0.38 percentage points. Broadcom said nearly $500 million in fraud had been reported over the prior 12 months on successfully authenticated challenges.
The launch expands Broadcom’s payment-security capabilities within Arcot and reflects growing demand from financial institutions for tools that can address AI-enhanced social engineering attacks rather than relying solely on traditional account or transaction-level fraud detection.
Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) launched Arcot Scam Defense, a new payment-security capability designed to detect and block social engineering fraud during card-not-present transactions, even after a customer successfully completes authentication.
The product targets a growing fraud gap in which legitimate cardholders are manipulated by scammers into revealing credentials or approving one-time passwords and biometric challenges. Because traditional 3-D Secure systems often treat a successfully authenticated transaction as legitimate, those payments can pass through despite the cardholder being under the influence of a scam.
Arcot Scam Defense adds a second real-time risk layer after authentication. Broadcom said the system evaluates transaction data, device intelligence, historical behavior and details of the authentication interaction itself to identify patterns associated with social engineering.
Signals can include differences between the checkout and authentication devices, delayed OTP entry, use of an alternative authentication method, unusually large physical distance between devices and, through third-party integrations, whether the authenticating device is on an active phone call.
Broadcom said the platform evaluates these signals collectively rather than relying on a single indicator, allowing it to detect behavioral shifts even when the customer has voluntarily completed the authentication process.
The company cited pilot testing in which reviewing only the riskiest 1% of successfully authenticated challenges at one major issuer would have prevented an estimated $4 million in fraud in a single month, while reducing authentication success by just 0.38 percentage points. Broadcom said nearly $500 million in fraud had been reported over the prior 12 months on successfully authenticated challenges.
The launch expands Broadcom’s payment-security capabilities within Arcot and reflects growing demand from financial institutions for tools that can address AI-enhanced social engineering attacks rather than relying solely on traditional account or transaction-level fraud detection.
