As social commerce evolves, trust has emerged as a determining factor for success, making security, transparency, and collaboration essential to protecting consumers. Fadi Mukadem, Senior Vice President and Group Country Manager for UAE, Kuwait and Qatar at Visa, discusses how businesses can combat increasingly sophisticated fraud in this environment.
With more consumers discovering and purchasing products through social platforms, is fraud prevention prepared for the risks?
Social commerce is reshaping the shopping journey and becoming an increasingly important gateway to digital commerce. As more consumers discover and purchase products through influencers and social media channels, both businesses and scammers have new opportunities to reach customers. According to Visa’s latest Stay Secure survey, 69% of UAE consumers have made a purchase directly through a social platform, and 38% of those who have been scammed said the scam occurred on social media. Fraudsters exploit the trust environment through fake storefronts, impersonation, and deceptive promotions, often before payment is made.
This evolution requires stronger security standards. This means building trust throughout the entire shopping journey, from the moment a consumer discovers a product to the moment they complete their purchase. Real-time risk detection, stronger authentication, trusted payment experiences, and greater collaboration between platforms, merchants, banks, and payment providers all have a role to play. Consumers expect their digital experiences to be convenient and secure, and it’s up to the industry to deliver both. Trust is ultimately what allows consumers to embrace new commerce experiences with confidence.
Where do you think the biggest gaps remain in protecting consumers from digital fraud?
The commerce ecosystem is more connected than ever, but that also makes it more complex. Typically, organizations are only aware of a portion of a consumer’s behavior, but fraudsters operate across the entire ecosystem. Trust cannot be built by a single organization acting alone. Staying ahead requires collaboration between banks, merchants, technology platforms, payment providers and governments.
Our research shows that only 19% of people think they should be primarily responsible for protecting themselves from fraud. Instead, we expect banks, payment providers, and technology platforms to work together to create a more secure digital experience. Effective collaboration helps prevent fraud in its early stages and strengthens consumer trust in digital commerce by identifying emerging threats early and coordinating responses across the ecosystem.
Our global network provides visibility across billions of transactions, allowing you to identify patterns and emerging threats that individual organizations may not be aware of on their own. This network-level intelligence, combined with partnerships across the public and private sectors, helps strengthen resilience across the payments ecosystem.
When AI agents make purchases on behalf of consumers, what safeguards will be needed to ensure people are in control?
AI is already transforming the way people discover products, compare options, and make purchasing decisions. This has the potential to make commerce more intuitive, personalized, and efficient than ever before. Our Stay Secure research found that 85% of UAE consumers have used an AI tool to assist them with their shopping, but only 32% trust an AI agent to complete a purchase on their behalf. This shows that while consumers are excited about what AI can offer, they are not yet ready to take over the final decision-making. The future of AI-powered commerce ultimately depends not on what AI can do, but on how much consumers trust it.
As AI becomes more integrated into commerce, trust will depend on transparent and secure experiences. People need to know when and how AI is being used and maintain control over every transaction. Transparency, accountability and consumer control are the cornerstones of mainstream adoption. This requires intelligent fraud prevention and security built into the experience from the beginning.
Through initiatives like Visa Intelligent Commerce, we are working with partners across the ecosystem to ensure that AI-powered commerce delivers greater convenience without compromising consumer trust or security. Innovation can only scale if trust is built into the experience from the beginning.
What do you think separates the businesses that succeed in an AI-driven commerce environment from those that don’t?
Businesses need to build trust in every part of the customer experience, beyond the point of payment. In an increasingly AI-powered and digitally connected economy, trust is becoming more than just a security requirement, it’s becoming a business differentiator. As AI becomes more integrated into the shopping journey, consumers will increasingly expect strong security, transparency, and control along with convenience in every interaction.
Meeting these expectations requires a broader approach to security. Businesses need to move beyond securing the payments themselves and focus on securing the entire customer journey. As commerce becomes increasingly connected, providing that level of security also requires closer collaboration between merchants, banks, technology platforms, and payment providers.
As the UAE advances its Vision 2031 goals, businesses that embed trust and security into every customer interaction will be best placed to drive the next phase of digital commerce. Successful companies are those that view trust as a strategic advantage, not just a security requirement. When consumers trust their experiences, they engage with more confidence, adopt new technologies more quickly, and participate more fully in the digital economy.
