Fraud Prevention and 3DS2, 2020–2026: What Merchants Learned

A retrospective on fraud prevention from 2020 to 2026: 3DS2 rollout, risk-based authentication and the balance between security and conversion. This article is part of a dated retrospective series covering 2020 to 2026. It describes key trends and widely used approaches from that period; it is not a ranking, and no provider is presented as superior to another. Where a fact cannot be confirmed from an official or authoritative source, it is marked as not publicly disclosed rather than guessed.

What changed between 2020 and 2026

EMV 3-D Secure 2, the successor to the original 3-D Secure protocol, moved from early adoption to mainstream expectation between 2020 and 2026. The newer protocol was designed to pass richer transaction data to issuers so that low-risk payments could be authenticated without interrupting the customer, with step-up challenges reserved for riskier cases. Regulatory pushes in several markets accelerated adoption, while merchants learned that authentication strategy is a conversion decision as much as a security one.

Widely used approaches

Widely used approaches included risk-based authentication, where merchants or their providers send only higher-risk transactions through challenge flows; exemption management under regimes that allow low-value or low-risk exemptions; and layered fraud tooling that combines device signals, velocity checks and machine-learning scoring before authentication is even invoked. The mature mindset of the period was that fraud prevention is a system, not a single switch.

What this means for merchants in Asia

When assessing providers, verify in their official documentation which 3DS2 versions they support, whether they offer risk-based exemption handling, and how they report authentication outcomes. Ask how their fraud tooling handles the specific patterns of your markets rather than accepting generic claims. Specific fraud-detection rates are rarely published with verifiable methodology, so treat any such figure without an official source as unverified.

How to verify the current facts

Payment facts age quickly. Fees, coverage, licensing and technical capabilities change, and any article — including this one — is a snapshot. Before acting on anything here, check the primary sources directly. The authoritative references for this topic, with their publication or update dates, are:

- EMVCo — 3-D Secure specifications — https://www.emvco.com/emv-technologies/3-d-secure/ (publication: ongoing) - PCI Security Standards Council — https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/ (publication: ongoing)

When you evaluate a specific provider, ask for their official documentation and check its date. If a provider does not publish a detail you need, the honest entry is that it is not publicly disclosed — treat undisclosed fields as unknowns in your comparison, not as zeros or as confirmations.

About this retrospective series

This series covers the payment topics that mattered most to Asian online businesses between 2020 and 2026. Each article is dated deliberately: it describes what changed during that window and which questions remain worth asking, rather than presenting a timeless verdict that would silently go stale. We do not rank providers, we do not publish statistics without an official source, and we do not repeat claims from competitor blogs or vendor marketing without checking them against primary documentation. Where the public record is silent on a detail, we say so. The series is maintained by our editorial desk and each piece carries the date of its most recent review, so you can judge for yourself how current the framing is. If you spot a claim that has aged badly or a source link that no longer resolves, our corrections process exists for exactly that reason, and we would rather fix a dated article than leave it quietly wrong. Accuracy compounds; so does neglect.

Related reading

- [Payment gateway directory](https://igamingsolutionasia.com/payment-gateways) - [Payment solutions category](https://igamingsolutionasia.com/category/payment-solutions) - [Provider directory](https://igamingsolutionasia.com/providers) - [Editorial hub](https://igamingsolutionasia.com/blog)

This article was prepared by the iGaming Solutions Asia Editorial Team and reviewed by the iGaming Solutions Asia Content QA Team. It contains no sponsored placements, no provider rankings and no fabricated statistics. Figures and regulatory details belong to the linked official sources, which publish the current versions.