Press Releases:
Opodo Meets The Threat of Online Fraud Head-on with
Retail Decisions (ReD)
In the world of online commerce the fight against online fraud is a major challenge. It is a challenge Retail Decisions' payment fraud detection service has helped online travel company Opodo meet with impressive results. Retail Decisions' CEO provided Electronic Payments International with insight into the solution. Sarah Williams reports:
Airline tickets number amongst the top three items bought online by 97 percent of consumers in the U.S. and Europe, according to a survey conducted by payment services provider Retail Decisions (ReD). Not surprisingly online travel agents find themselves a key target of criminals stalking internet-based payments. Indicative of the scale of the problem, UK payments body APACS reports a 200 percent increase in airline card fraud in the UK since 2001.
However, meeting the threat of online fraud head-on can prove highly successful as pan-European online travel company, Opodo found. In early-2007 Opodo selected ReD to provide security for its UK, German, French and Italian websites with results the travel company reports reduced card losses by a "six-figure amount" in the first six months. In addition, costs incurred by Opodo's staff in the manual review of transactions aimed at detecting fraud fell by 40 percent during the period. Opodo's services cover 500 airlines, 65,000 hotels and 7,000 car hire locations worldwide. Opodo is owned by Amadeus, the world's biggest processor of travel bookings.
The ReD Shield system ReD deployed to reduce payment fraud at Opodo can best be described as multi-faceted, Carl Clump, ReD's CEO told EPI. He explained that the initial step is to obtain transaction data from customers, typically covering a three to six month period. The data is then analysed and used to develop bespoke fraud prevention strategies for the client. The greater the quantity of historical data the more accurate the customised strategy can be.
ReD Shield's real-time payments monitoring involves a number of steps. The first is typically very basic, along the lines of checking whether the payment card being used is listed as lost or stolen. Second, merchant-specific payment velocity checks are carried out to verify that, for example, a particular card is not being used more than redetermined number of times during a certain period. Next, geographic feasibility checks are carried out, enabling the identification of a card presented for payment
in, say, London at 09.00 and then again in Edinburgh a few minutes later. ReD also uses neural software capable of intelligent tasks similar to those performed by the human brain to help detect unusual customer behaviour patterns.
ReD also builds in parameters that are very specific to individual clients. Standard solutions are avoided because "each client is unique," said Clump."Even businesses operating in the same product category can have different risk profiles, different target customers and even different opening hours patterns." Next, internet protocol (IP) address identification is used to detect where transactions are coming from even if the customer is using a proxy server, which is, in essence, an anonymous IP address.
ReD is also investigating personal computer (PC) fingerprinting technology, which is based on each PC's unique characteristics and allows remote identification of a particular PC, even if the IP address has been changed.
Clump stressed that ReD's payment monitoring holds significant benefits for its clients, which in the travel industry also include Travelocity, Hotwire, Thomas Cook, Harvey World Travel and Travelex. Other major clients include retailers Wal-Mart and John Lewis Partnership and payment processors Chase Paymentech Solutions, First Data, euroConex and GlobalCollect.
ReD, which hosts the world's largest proprietary data base of suspect payment cards monitors about 12 billion card transactions annually and estimates that its systems allow its clients to prevent about $1.2 billion in fraudulent purchases each year. ReD also provides payments processing services and has fuel card issuing and pre-paid card operations in Australia, the UK and Europe.
Retail Decisions believes that there are a number of other reasons why it is able to achieve impressive results for its clients. First, explained Clump, unlike many of its competitors, ReD offers a customised rather than a generic, one-size-fits-all solution.
As a result, the company only works with large clients or aggregators of smaller customers. The neural technology incorporated by ReD into its fraud prevention solutions is also a unique benefit as only ReD has access to this proprietary software.
Moreover, he added that many players in the fraud prevention market are effectively only providing customers with a single piece of software. By contrast, ReD has risk analysts who constantly monitor transactions and who are able to change a customer's control parameters on a daily basis if required, said Clump. ReD also polls data on behalf of all its customers and is able to share this intelligence across its customer base. For example, ReD analysts recently detected a concerted online attack on a customer in the US and were able to eliminate the risk on a global basis.
As a global player, ReD is also able to share data across geographies. And because ReD operates in multiple industries ranging from gaming and retail to travel and banking, it has a broad perspective of fraud patterns and is able to pass on its knowledge from one business sector to another. This is particularly useful since criminals are constantly moving the targets of their attacks, rapidly changing both geographies and sectors. The fight against online fraud means always being able to respond quickly to changes in the ways in which criminals are operating, said Clump.
Many online businesses attempt to manage fraud detection and prevention in-house. According to Clump there are several risks to this approach. First, their knowledge is often limited as their key strengths lie in their own marketing and merchandising. Second, in-house IT teams often have only their own limited fraud experience to draw on. In short, while merchants are aware of the threat fraud poses to their business, they tend to operate in isolation when it comes to fraud because they rarely cooperate with each other and are not fraud prevention experts.
Merchants using their own home-grown fraud prevention solutions also run the risk of turning away valid customers. Typically, said Clump, between 6 percent and 8 percent of transactions are rejected by online merchants with in-house fraud prevention systems. Yet, in reality only 1 percent to 2 percent of all transactions are actually illegitimate, effectively meaning that up to 7 percent of overall transactions that are actually valid are
rejected.
Sun Country Airlines Partners with Acculynk for Secure Internet PIN Debit Payment Option
Leading Low-Cost Airline to add PaySecure to its Suite of Payment Offerings in 2010
ATLANTA, GA, March 31, 2010 – Sun Country Airlines, recently named in the “Top Ten Domestic Airlines” by Travel+Leisure magazine for the fourth year in a row, has partnered with Acculynk to bring the security of PIN debit to its online customers. PaySecure, the first software-only service for PIN debit payments on the Internet, will become a standard payment option on the airline’s website in 2010.
Sun Country flies to popular destinations in the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean, and recently launched a new program, Sun Country Vacations, which allows travelers to save time and money by booking airfare, hotel, rental cars and more in a single, convenient transaction.
“Sun Country is introducing many exciting initiatives for our customers in 2010, and PaySecure fits very well with our overall strategy of new products and services that provide customers more choice and more value,” said Stan Gadek, president and CEO of Sun Country Airlines.
Acculynk is the only provider of a payment service that enables a consumer to use their current debit card and PIN to pay for online purchases, with no enrollment or redirection from the merchant website. Sun Country Airlines is the second airline in 2010 to announce adoption of PaySecure, following Spirit Airlines’ announcement in January.
“Airlines and E-commerce merchants are seeking ways to cut costs and increase payment security,” said Ashish Bahl, CEO of Acculynk. “PaySecure’s value propositions align well with the needs of any airline or business accepting online payments, and we are very pleased that Sun Country Airlines, a clear innovator in the airline industry, chose to add PaySecure to its online checkout, over and above other types of emerging payment methods.”
PaySecure was introduced in March 2009 and is currently accepted on thousands of storefronts and through airlines and merchants such as AirTran, Ritz Interactive, Jelly Belly, Ace Hardware Outlet and ShoppersChoice. “Our partners are seeing an exponential growth in debit transactions on their websites, and we are the only payment method on the market that harnesses this growth to provide immediate savings and incremental transaction volume,” said Bahl.
About Sun Country Airlines
Sun Country Airlines (MN Airlines, LLC, d.b.a. Sun Country Airlines) is based in St. Paul, Minnesota. The award-winning airline, which flies to popular destinations in the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean, has earned a reputation for offering world-class service at an affordable price. Sun Country has been named a “Top Ten Domestic Airline” by Travel+Leisure for the fourth year in a row and Condé Nast Traveler for the third year in a row. Customers can obtain more information by visiting either SunCountry.com or SunCountryVacations.com.
About Acculynk
Acculynk secures online transactions with a suite of software-only services that are backed by a powerful encryption and authentication framework protected by a family of issued and pending patents. Acculynk’s services provide greater security, reliability, convenience and return on investment for consumers, merchants, networks, issuers and acquirers. For more information, visit http://www.acculynk.com.
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