Bitdefender and ING Bank Romania tested an AI that buys from suspect online stores to see who gets the money. In eight months it flagged 191 merchants.
A security company and a bank have teamed up to catch fake online stores by buying from them. Bitdefender built an AI agent that makes test purchases at suspicious shops. ING Bank Romania then checks who actually receives the payment. The pilot is called Honeycards, and the companies say it is the first of its kind.
A fake store can look perfect, with polished product pages, a working cart and a convincing payment form. Studying the site often does not show who gets the money. So the AI agent browses the store and buys something using a special card made for the project, called a honeycard. The bank then looks up the merchant tied to that payment and compares it with other evidence.
The figures come from internal data from the pilot, not an outside review. Over eight months, the system flagged 191 suspicious merchants and placed them under monitoring. It stopped fraudulent payments for 404 customers. Those payments added up to more than 121,000 Romanian lei.
The material does not explain how the detection rate was measured.
Every test purchase uses a card issued only for the project. Real customers, their cards and their data are not involved. The system does not look at customers' shopping habits. It processes only the merchant details needed for checking, within data protection and bank secrecy laws.
A flag is not a verdict. A merchant found through a test purchase is first treated as suspicious. Independent checks and human review follow. Some flagged merchants may be legitimate businesses that fraudsters are misusing to test stolen cards. A site's looks alone are not grounds for blocking it. The names of verified merchants are not made public.
Bitdefender and ING Bank Romania are considering expanding the project to other payment methods, other markets and other financial institutions. Bitdefender's Cătălina Albișteanu said cybersecurity firms and banks each see part of the same fraud scheme, and sharing it could help stop losses sooner. ING's Alin Becheanu said AI adds speed, while human checks help make the right call.
No dates for an expansion have been given. It is also not stated whether ordinary shoppers will see any change, or in what form.
A shop that looks flawless can still be fake, and banks are testing ways to trace the money before shoppers lose it.
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