Careful, the Store Detective Is Watching

Department stores and other big retailers introduced the concept of a store
detective long ago, to keep an eye on the customers as well as the hired
help. Now payments processor WorldPay is rolling out a high-tech version for
use by online commerce operations.


The privately held UK company, with American headquarters
in Sterling, Va., says the application, called WorldAlert, acts as an
individual “store detective” overseeing each transaction.


It protects both online retailers and shoppers by detecting patterns of
fraudulent buying behavior and automatically alerting the retailer to the
level of risk involved, the company said.


Online credit card fraud remains one of the major hazards to doing business
online. According to a recent
survey
from Experian, Internet retailers are still an easy target for
credit card fraudsters. The research found that 73 per cent of online
retailers are experiencing chargebacks as a result of fraud.


“Despite this, some 28 per cent of online retailers are still employing only
manual fraud checks and many online retailers are still not using any
external information to verify a customer’s name and address before
authorizing an online transaction,” said Gareth Jones, fraud products
director at Experian.

Experian’s anti-fraud solutions includes e-identity, which is available via
the Internet on. E-identity accesses Experian’s consumer databases and public
information sources to return an “authentication score.” Many other companies
have similar technology.


WorldPay said its new product analyzes multiple card types in real time,
offering across-the-board payment screening. WorldPay said it developed the
global transaction system in-house, to address the needs of its own
customers.


“… the third-party anti-fraud technologies currently available (are) simply
too complex and require too much intervention by the retailer,” said Nick
Ogden, CEO of WorldPay.


WorldPay says it has 16,000 merchant customers in 115 countries selling to
shoppers worldwide.

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