SAS, the leader in business intelligence and HSBC Holdings plc, one of the largest banking and financial services organizations in the world, on Tuesday announced a long-term partnership to transform the payment card fraud-detection market.

The SAS solution will be implemented in all of HSBC's major card businesses worldwide. With a credit and debit card portfolio of well over 100 million cards, HSBC is one of the world's largest plastic card issuers. In addition to reducing potential losses, the project will lower the operational costs of fighting fraud and will create a more flexible fraud platform so that HSBC can respond faster to new threats as they arise. SAS and HSBC are also cooperating on developing a strategy to extend the technology into other transaction monitoring applications.

Siddharth N. Mehta, CEO, HSBC North America Holdings Inc., said, "We chose to work with SAS primarily because of its technology assets, extensive R&D capability and industry leadership, and its ability to support us across the globe. We are impressed with SAS' understanding of our business goals and its flexibility to meet our demanding requirements."

Sudipta K. Sen, MD & CEO, SAS Institute (India) Pvt. Ltd., said, "With our proven ability to deliver best-of-the-class business intelligence & analytical software and solutions, coupled with our extensive R&D efforts on Banking Intelligence Solutions, we are today well-positioned to help leading Banks & Financial Institutions in India in their quest to spur growth & profitability, enhance customer care and abide by compliance requirements."

Each year, banks and financial organizations across the world lose more than US$2bn annually card to payment card fraud. Over the last decade, as banks have developed improved processes and systems to identify and stop fraud, fraudsters have also adapted. Today most banks rely on fraud-detection systems, the types of fraud threats faced by card issuers evolve rapidly. HSBC recognizes the need for a new generation of fraud detection that includes more sophisticated analytic intelligence, real-time decision making at the point of sale, and complete integration with anti-fraud measures such as chip and PIN across the industry.