E-Commerce Group Forms to Combat Fraud

A group of e-commerce companies is taking steps to fight e-commerce fraud.

HNC Software Inc. recently asked five companies to help it battle
resistance from merchants, according to The
Wall Street Journal.

HNC Software is forming a consortium of electronic commerce companies to use credit card collection data to combat fraud.

The company has agreements with a number of banks and credit card issuers who provide it with information on fraudulent activity. That information, along with stats provided by other members will be placed in a large database that will help stem fraud.

Among the companies who have joined with HNC are CyberCash Inc., ShopNow Inc., Ebit.Net, and Signio Inc. and EC Direct Inc.

Analysts believe as much as half of all credit-card fraud has its roots in Internet and electronic commerce transactions.

The consortium is necessary because fraud-detection systems require a large database of information to successfully detect criminal activity.

Banks and other credit card issuers offer HNC transaction records from
more than 260 million accounts. Merchants use that data to decide whether to approve transactions.