For e-tail and e-commerce merchants, mobile shopping has become an engine of growth. In fact, recent data from IMRG, the UK’s industry association for online retail, suggests that e-commerce growth in the UK is being driven by mobile transactions.
While the online industry welcomes growth from mobile, it does pose additional challenges for fraud prevention. The whole ethos of the mobile channel is to make things more convenient, to remove barriers and to drive activity.
However, in doing so, security can suffer. As more and more companies make the move to a true multi-channel consumer experience, where mobile is an integral part of their overall offering, it creates significant layers of complexity.
These companies must focus on the customer experience across the different channels, but they must also concentrate on security and fraud protection. The reality is that as more consumers use mobile devices for purchasing, we now have another channel where fraudsters can easily misrepresent themselves as genuine consumers of goods and services.
The new multi-channel and mobile world doesn’t change the basics of fraud prevention, but it does move the goalposts and requires widening the focus of an organisation to take on additional information to remain successful. The solution as always in fraud prevention is data. The more relevant information you have, the better decisions you can usually make.
We now have another channel where fraudsters can easily misrepresent themselves as genuine consumers of goods and services
Up until now, fraud screening systems have been limited to looking at ideal consumer behaviour. However, all consumers are unique individuals. When you treat your consumers as individuals and look at how they are behaving over time, it’s possible to identify fraud more effectively and efficiently. This is true for traditional retail channels as well as for emerging channels like mobile.
By implementing next-generation data summarisation and aggregation tools, online merchants can personalise their fraud risk management strategy to their business and their client base, and use their existing data, both past and present, to identify effectively and combat fraud. Being able to reference that historic information as part of a fraud-screening decision gives a transparent and effective way of ensuring the authenticity of the customer.
As mobile grows, companies will need to continue to find the right balance of understanding consumer behaviour, creating better consumer experiences and preventing fraud. By aggregating and analysing a merchant’s historical account information, solutions such as Accertify can combat fraud, while leaving genuine customers, even if purchasing in new channels like mobile, to receive uninterrupted service.
Richard Harris
Vice president, general manager
Accertify EMEA
Toll free: 0800 917 1801
E-mail: emea@accertify.com
