Payment fraud is, unfortunately, unavoidable. Where there is profit from successful business operations, there is the risk of fraudulent activity. As technology advances, unscrupulous individuals use increasingly inventive means to achieve personal financial gain. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the rapidly expanding e-Commerce industry has become a target for modern day criminals.
Online merchants depend on payment security for their livelihoods. Without effective payment fraud prevention, they face substantial financial losses, not to mention fines and reputation damage. Payment service providers offer automated security systems as part of their payment gateways, engineering proprietary risk management solutions to defend against fraudulent activity without compromising client conversion rates.
ECOMMPAY prides itself on providing a comprehensive and well-rounded, yet ultimately individual and bespoke, service to e-Commerce merchants.
Intimately familiar with the specifics of client industries, as well as the regulatory landscape, the payment service provider develops, updates, and perfects its risk management processes to preemptively address security concerns.
Though the success of these processes is due, in no small part, to the interdisciplinary, collaborative approach ECOMMPAY nurtures among colleagues, which lead to the development of the proprietary FraudStop risk management system, individual achievements can be attributed to the creativity and efficiency of the company’s Fraud/Chargebacks Monitoring Division.
Successful risk management relies on the combination between automated anti-fraud system capabilities and the manual monitoring of suspicious activity.
ECOMMPAY’s experienced risk analysts are able to immediately recognise unauthorised transactions, as well as any patterns suggesting a targeted attack. While FraudStop effectively prevents isolated incidents of fraudulent behaviour, the human factor provides added benefit by identifying credit card fraud patterns and consulting clients on best practice.
Over the past year, considerable effort has been dedicated to enhancing FraudStop’s capabilities. Tech-savvy risk analysts, working in tandem with software developers, successfully engineered the automated system to apply machine learning to the scoring principle, which assigns a pre-determined weight to each transaction variable.
Though automation plays a significant role in negating risk, the importance of manual monitoring and the human factor cannot be overstated.
Following a consultation to determine client objectives and business specifications, it is the members of the Fraud/Chargebacks Monitoring Division who dynamically adapt existing FraudStop filters or, if necessary, create new ones to address merchant requirements. They then carefully monitor performance, making adjustments as needed.
As an example of the department’s operational success, FraudStop’s transaction scoring module flagged suspicious activity based on geolocation and transaction sums. Risk analysts then recognised the transactions as fraudulent, resulting from credit card theft related to a data breach in a large North American bank. Immediately responding to the threat, ECOMMPAY was able to return funds for 170 illegal transactions in the sum of USD 180 000.
Another recent case demonstrated the importance of the human factor in detecting patterns of fraudulent activity. The team’s manual monitoring identified a notorious fraudster, who tried to register 20 different user profiles in an attempt to use stolen credit cards. Quickly recognising and negating the threat saved ECOMMPAY’s client from significant financial losses.
So, while credit card fraud is unavoidable, it is preventable. The secret to effective risk management lies in ensuring an automatic security service complemented by manual transaction monitoring by highly experienced risk analysts. In ECOMMPAY’s case, this combination not only keeps the payment fraud detection rate above 97% but has also achieved a 75% decrease in declined transactions, ensuring merchants collect maximum profits while safeguarding security.
