CBUAE, Mastercard Build Fraud Risk Capabilities to Strengthen Financial Resilience

Key Takeaways

• CBUAE Builds Fraud Expertise: The Central Bank of the UAE and Mastercard completed a four-day capacity-building program focused on fraud risk management in the digital payments ecosystem.
• Training Reached Across the Central Bank: Twenty-five CBUAE employees from various sectors participated in technical sessions and practical case studies at the central bank’s Abu Dhabi headquarters.
• Emerging Payment Risks Take Center Stage: The program covered digital payments, emerging commerce models and developing fraud risks, alongside detection and mitigation practices.
• Issuing and Acceptance Environments Were Covered: Participants examined fraud management practices across both sides of the payments ecosystem rather than treating fraud solely as an isolated financial-crime issue.
• Capacity Building Supports Financial Resilience: The CBUAE positioned institutional expertise as part of its broader work to strengthen the security and resilience of the UAE financial system.

Deep Dive

The Central Bank of the UAE and Mastercard have completed a four-day program designed to sharpen the central bank’s expertise in fraud risk management, with 25 CBUAE employees receiving training on the risks emerging alongside new forms of digital payments and commerce.

Delivered by Mastercard Academy at the CBUAE’s headquarters in Abu Dhabi, the program brought together employees from several areas of the central bank for technical sessions and practical case studies. The curriculum ranged from the workings of the payments ecosystem and digital payments to emerging commerce models, fraud risks and methods for detecting and mitigating fraud across issuing and acceptance environments.

The program is part of an ongoing collaboration between the CBUAE and Mastercard. In announcing its completion Sunday, the central bank placed the training within a larger effort to build institutional capabilities and reinforce the security and resilience of the UAE financial system.

That matters because payments fraud is not a problem that sits still long enough for expertise to become permanent. New payment methods and commerce models can change the opportunities available to fraudsters, leaving financial institutions and their supervisors with the less glamorous but necessary job of making sure their own knowledge changes with them. For the CBUAE, the answer begins partly with its own people.

“Developing national capabilities is a strategic priority for maintaining the resilience of the UAE’s financial system,” Fatma Abdulla Al Jabri, assistant governor for Financial Crime, Market Conduct and Consumer Protection at the CBUAE, said in the announcement.

Al Jabri said the program was intended to develop the institutional expertise necessary to keep pace with evolving fraud risks, while bringing the competencies of CBUAE teams into line with international best practices and standards. She also pointed to the central bank’s continued collaboration with Mastercard as a means of supporting capacity building and reinforcing trust in the UAE’s rapidly developing digital payments ecosystem.

The composition of the training reflects the breadth of that task. Participants did not study fraud as an isolated financial-crime problem. The program moved through the payments ecosystem itself, examining digital payments and emerging commerce models before turning to emerging fraud risks and the practices used to detect and mitigate them.

Understanding how fraud is changing requires understanding the systems in which it occurs. The CBUAE’s program therefore joined the two subjects rather than treating fraud controls as something to be considered only after a new payment model is already in place.

Mastercard described the initiative as part of its broader relationship with the UAE, where the company says it has been present for more than 40 years. Gina Petersen-Skyrme, Mastercard’s senior vice president and country manager for the UAE and Oman, said developing expertise in fraud risk management is part of the company’s work with the central bank in support of the country’s digital transformation.

“Through Mastercard Academy, we are proud to contribute to developing national capabilities and strengthening the resilience of the systems that individuals and businesses rely on every day,” Petersen-Skyrme said.

The four-day course was modest in size, with 25 participants, but its focus reaches beyond a single training exercise. The CBUAE described national capability development as an ongoing priority, tying institutional expertise directly to financial-system resilience.

That puts people alongside systems and controls in the response to payments fraud. Detection technology matters, as do rules and processes. But somebody still has to understand what the technology is finding, how the underlying risks are changing and where new forms of commerce may create vulnerabilities that yesterday’s controls were never designed to catch.

For a financial system embracing digital payments, that expertise has to develop at roughly the same pace as the systems it is expected to oversee.

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