Persistent launches merchant fraud tool on Databricks

Persistent has launched a Merchant Risk Management and Fraud Detection solution on the Databricks Data Intelligence platform, aimed at financial institutions and payment providers facing rising fraud risks.

The system is designed to identify risky merchants earlier in the payment chain instead of relying mainly on checks after transactions occur. It combines onboarding checks with ongoing monitoring of transactions, chargebacks and external signals, and can trigger actions such as enhanced monitoring, watch listing or transaction restrictions.

The launch comes as banks, acquirers, payment service providers and digital platforms face mounting pressure as digital payment volumes rise. They are dealing with fraud losses, tighter regulatory scrutiny and reputational risk, while older approaches based on static rules and post-transaction analysis have left gaps in early detection.

The new offering uses Agentic AI during merchant onboarding to assess business profiles, compliance histories, transaction patterns and external indicators before a merchant starts processing payments. Once a merchant is active, the system monitors for signs of fraud or compliance issues in real time.

Claimed Impact

According to Persistent, the product could reduce chargeback and fraud losses by 20% to 40% through earlier risk detection. It also says customers may see a 30% to 60% improvement in fraud detection accuracy, a 50% to 70% reduction in manual review work and a 10% to 20% reduction in risk management costs through automation and workflow changes.

Developed as a Databricks accelerator, the software is built to work within the Databricks environment. It brings together batch and streaming data, merchant profiles and external risk signals into a single governed data layer intended to support real-time decisions and shorten deployment times.

Partnership Focus

Persistent is a Databricks Global Systems Integrator partner with more than 900 Databricks-certified professionals and more than eight accelerators on the Databricks platform. The merchant risk product is available to banks, acquirers and payment service providers in global markets.

Merchant oversight has become a growing focus across the payments sector as institutions try to stop bad actors from entering their systems in the first place. By shifting checks upstream into onboarding and adding continuous monitoring after activation, providers are aiming to spot warning signs before fraud losses mount or compliance issues escalate.

Barath Narayanan, Global BFSI and Europe Geo Head at Persistent, linked the launch to broader market shifts.

"Merchant risk has become one of the most complex challenges for financial institutions, payment service providers and digital platforms as transaction volumes grow and regulatory scrutiny intensifies. Effective risk management now depends on the ability to transform data into intelligence and respond in real time. Our work with Databricks enables us to combine scalable data processing with AI to help financial institutions identify emerging risk earlier, improve decision making and strengthen merchant oversight across the entire lifecycle," said Narayanan.

Databricks similarly described the issue as a need to unify large volumes of data and respond quickly to emerging threats.

Josh Meyer, Global Head of Partner Solutions and Industry GTM, Databricks, commented, "As payment ecosystems grow and regulatory scrutiny increases, merchant risk management is becoming an intelligence-driven challenge. Databricks, together with Persistent, helps financial institutions, payment providers, and digital platforms unify data at scale to gain real-time visibility across the merchant lifecycle. This approach enables earlier risk detection, sharper decision-making, and stronger, more resilient compliance in a rapidly evolving payments landscape."