Visa has teamed up with security solution provider FireEye to introduce a Community Threat Intelligence (CTI) to help protect payment data belonging to merchants and issuers.

According to Visa, the CTI is the first of its kind solution that will allow merchants to identify and respond to attacks against their IT and payment infrastructure in a faster way.

Usually threat intelligence is shared through e-mail or static documents, but with the new system FireEye will operate a simple web based service that is easy to use, which will help stakeholders better understand attacks targeting the ecosystem.

Initially, FireEye and Visa will offer tools to merchants to provide greater cyber intelligence and enhanced threat monitoring, with FireEye’s cyber forensics group Mandiant expected to customise the solution to address the needs of all types of merchants later down the line.

Visa CEO Charlie Scharf said: "By combining Visa’s unparalleled view into global payments and FireEye’s industry-leading cyber security expertise, we intend to bring faster, actionable intelligence directly to players across the payments system.

"Although we are leading efforts to render stolen data useless through smart technologies, data security remains foundational for merchants."