high risk payment processing blog

Online Fraud Trends (and How to Stay Ahead of Them)

With ecommerce steadfast in its growth, online fraud is following suit, and fraudsters’ tactics are becoming increasingly sophisticated. At High Risk Match, we understand the importance of staying ahead of these evolving threats. By knowing the types of fraud you’re likely to face and equipping yourself with the best solutions, you can secure your business’s future and protect it from whatever comes your way.

Know What You’re Up Against

Fraudsters are always on the prowl, and with them comes a slew of potential threats. However, understanding these threats will help you better equip yourself to circumvent their tactics and keep your business safe. Here are some of the types of fraud to watch out for:

Clean Fraud

Clean fraud is initially difficult to detect as fraudsters use stolen customer information that has been “scrubbed” and validated to appear consistent with the actual customer. Typically, they have more than one piece of information, such as the card number, name, and address associated with the account.

Friendly Fraud

Also known as chargeback fraud, friendly fraud occurs when someone makes an online purchase and later disputes the charges with their credit card company instead of requesting an exchange or return from the merchant first. This type of fraud can account for 40-80% of all fraud losses, resulting in chargebacks, lost goods, and double refunds.

Refund Fraud

In refund fraud, fraudsters exploit the refund process by making purchases and then asking for a refund (claiming the items are either damaged or undelivered) once they receive them. They have no intention of returning the items, so they end up with both your inventory and your money.

Payment Fraud

Hackers steal customers’ sensitive information and use it to make online purchases or create new accounts. Sometimes referred to as identity theft, payment fraud is usually only discovered once the customer disputes the charges and chargebacks are issued by the bank.

Phishing

Phishing is one of the most common ways fraudsters access sensitive information. They typically use email or text messages to act as an authentic merchant, redirecting clients to illegitimate websites to capture their credentials. This data is later used to make fraudulent purchases.

Credit Card Testing

Fraudsters use card testing to determine the validity of multiple (even hundreds of) stolen credit cards at once. Using a merchant’s checkout page, through a script or a bot, they verify the stolen information based on whether the transaction is approved or declined. This also allows them to scrub the data for later use in clean fraud, resulting in a dangerous (and costly) cycle of stolen data, and loss of revenue and customer trust.

Be Steps Ahead with Fraud Protection Tools

Adding multiple layers of security is one of the easiest ways to minimize losses and improve customer experience. At High Risk Match, we offer a comprehensive range of online fraud protection tools designed especially for small to medium-sized businesses. Here are some key tools to consider:

Standard Tools

Card Verification Value (CVV)

The CVV is a unique three or four-digit number assigned to each credit card, which confirms the customer knows the code or has the card in hand. Requiring CVVs adds an extra layer of security, helping to cut down on clean fraud and ultimately reducing chargebacks, manual reviews, and false positives.

Address Verification Service (AVS)

The AVS verifies the information exchanged between merchants and card issuers before the transaction is authorized. It matches the mailing and/or billing address provided by the cardholder to that linked to the card.

Advanced Tools

Card Tokenization

Tokenization replaces credit card details with a unique identifier (the “token”), ensuring sensitive data is not stored by the merchant. This helps decrease threats such as phishing, payment fraud, or identity theft. Tokens can be used for later transactions, while data is securely stored.

High Risk Match Vault

Our Vault resides on the High Risk Match Gateway to securely store data, including tokens and customer information. Merchants can create customer profiles to facilitate future transactions and update records and information in real-time.

Hosted Tokenization (HT)

Similar to tokenization, HT collects credit card information on the merchant’s behalf, and a token is returned to complete the transaction.

High Risk Match Essential

Our advanced fraud protection platform is designed with you in mind. Essential uses artificial intelligence (AI) to assess customer transactions in real-time, giving you the ability to approve or decline transactions based on predetermined risk parameters. This solution offers fully automated order decisioning, lowering the risk of refund fraud, chargebacks, and false positives.

3-D Secure 2.0 (3DS 2.0)

The industry standard for reducing instances of fraud during card-not-present transactions, 3DS 2.0 provides real-time authentication of the customer to their card issuer, and shifts liability to the issuer for authenticated transactions. This improves checkout speed, security, and cart abandonment rates while reducing occurrences of credit card testing.

Strategize to Thrive

Plan, protect, and prevail. Preventing ecommerce fraud can be simple and easy. Sure, there are many ways fraudsters can intrude, but with an effective fraud strategy and the right safeguards in place, you’ll be able to lock them out (and keep them out). And although there is no one-solution-fits-all approach when it comes to fraud protection, there are effective ways to mitigate their tactics:

Stay Attentive

Knowing your clients and understanding their habits will help you stay on top of any irregular activity and tip you off if something is illegitimate. Higher purchase amounts than normal, using multiple credit cards, or various attempts at purchasing are all reasons to be suspicious of a sale. More often than not, if it doesn’t feel right, it’s not.

Create a Multi-Layered Shield of Defense

Reinforcement is key. One of the most effective ways to keep threats at a minimum is to layer your prevention tools. High Risk Match allows you to customize your approach, set transaction amount limits, and implement auto-decisioning in Checkout. So, if a transaction doesn’t pass the first check (or layer), it is automatically declined, making it harder for fraudsters to infiltrate your secure system.

Triumph Over Trends

Set yourself up for success and boost sales with a fully-integrated ecommerce solution that comes with the full stack of options, so you can build a strong, nearly impassable system. Implement the right tools and safeguards today and get back to what really counts—your bottom line.

Take advantage of solutions like High Risk Match and enjoy the freedom of growing the business you’ve always envisioned. Stay ahead of online fraud trends, protect your business, and secure your future with High Risk Match.

For more information on how High Risk Match can support your business, contact us today.

Contact Us:

Meta Description: Stay ahead of online fraud trends with High Risk Match! Discover detailed insights and advanced tactics to protect your ecommerce business from sophisticated fraudsters.

Keywords: online fraud, ecommerce fraud, fraud prevention, fraud protection tools, High Risk Match, secure transactions, card-not-present fraud, identity theft, chargebacks, fraud trends

Tags: #OnlineFraud #FraudPrevention #EcommerceSecurity #HighRiskMerchant #SecureTransactions #Chargebacks #IdentityTheft #FraudTrends

Comments are closed.