Use Case: Preventing Financial Fraud Across Different Jurisdictions with Fully Homomorphic Encryption

Mastercard’s use of Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) demonstrates how Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) can support fraud detection across borders without compromising sensitive data. In this use case, Mastercard collaborated with Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority to pilot a system that allows encrypted International Bank Account Numbers (IBANs) to be checked for fraud risk without revealing the IBAN itself or transferring personal data across jurisdictions. Using FHE and a secure query hub, the system returns a simple true/false risk result while keeping all source data encrypted and localized. This approach addresses complex regulatory requirements around data localization, confidentiality, and cross-border transfer, offering strong privacy protections for consumers and operational efficiencies for financial institutions and governments.

The Research Coordination Network (RCN) for Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing and Analytics is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Award #2413978 and the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science under Award #DE-SC0024884.