This article is a summary of an Accertify commissioned study, conducted by Arizent Research. The resulting whitepaper provides insights, trends, and statistics from surveyed parties, which included merchants in global companies and fraud professionals from within those companies. Participants responded to questions about how their businesses are adapting to dynamic threats and implementing measures for fraud prevention.
Identity Fraud, one of the top three concerns for merchants, is a real and present threat for online platforms. This article helps merchants identify the scope of the problem with new survey results and outlines how Accertify helps to predict, prevent and protect them from Identity and other forms of eCommerce fraud.
30%1 of Merchants Are Most Concerned About Identity Fraud
The Accertify-commissioned study found that 30%1 of merchants were most concerned about identity theft. These merchants felt that identity fraud was a point of grave concern and 26%1 report that it is an area in which fraudulent activity has increased the most.
For merchants, trusting that a customer is who they say they are is paramount to reducing fraud. Regardless of what information is presented – valid shipping address, valid username, password, or other defining characteristic, fraud management tools can help merchants understand if the user is not a fraudster.
Types of Identity Fraud
A first step to mitigating the risks of identity fraud is to further define the nature of the breach.
There are numerous ways in which attacks of identity fraud on merchants may occur. These include:
- Account Opening Fraud: Account opening fraud happens when Cybercriminals fraudulently open accounts to scam banks out of large sums of money without ever being detected.
- Account Takeover Fraud: This form of fraud occurs when an individual takes over another person’s legitimate account, using it to transfer money or make fraudulent transactions. Cybercriminals can use credentials and impersonate the account holder.
- Synthetic ID Fraud: This form of fraud is one of the fastest-growing types of fraud, with whole rings of fraudsters getting in on the theft. Uncovering and avoiding this type of fraud requires extensive database verification of identities and rigorous statistical analysis and protocol.
Identity fraud losses grew 15%2 in 2019 and show no sign of slowing. The trend has continued. While other types of fraud fell, identity fraud caused $43 billion in losses2 in 2021. Coming in at the highest percentage loss rate of any kind of fraud, merchants are right to take this threat seriously.
Identity Fraud Management
Several checkpoints should be implemented to ensure that the person is in fact who they say they are.
Read on to learn about the three steps merchants should use to predict, prevent, and protect their platforms from retail fraud.
In addition, merchants surveyed in this study plan to invest in the following fraud management solutions:
- Multi-factor authentication: 35%1
- Increased hiring of fraud analysts: 32%1
- Tools that reduce refund fraud and account takeovers: 10%1
- Device intelligence: 30%1
- Bot detection: 25%1
- Behavioral analytics: 20%1
- Machine learning: 19%1
- Shared community or third-party data: 16%1
These data show that for merchants, combatting identity fraud as well as other types of fraud is critical to protecting and growing business today and into the future.
Fraud Management: Accertify Solutions Achieve Reliable Results
Whatever size company, fraud management is imperative. Accertify solutions help merchants trust who is on the other end of a transaction.
Accertify’s comprehensive fraud management platform was created by industry experts and is uniquely equipped to assist in protecting the world’s largest merchants from the latest fraud attacks, including identity theft. Accertify’s solution provides a solid yet flexible tool that will adapt to the ever-evolving threat landscapes.
Accertify’s Fraud Management Solution was specifically designed to address these eCommerce Fraud concerns and more.
Fast and Secure: the platform was built by former in-house fraud experts to defeat sophisticated cybercriminals. Accertify’s solutions can be deployed quickly and offer optimal security against fraudulent activities for eCommerce merchants.
Community: Accertify gives merchants access to two of the most extensive, secure, anonymous multi-merchant positive and negative databases in the industry. If you have never seen a particular online fraud data trail before, we can share our insight.
Flexibility: Accertify’s Fraud Platform is highly flexible. It is constantly evolving to adjust fraud rules, in real-time, to adapt to changing threats and business needs. The fraud rules can be combined with advanced machine learning models to optimize performance while targeting fraud specific to your business.
Request a consultation to learn more about Accertify’s fraud management solutions.
1Source: Arizent Research/PaymentsSource, December 2020/January 2021
2Source: Javelin Strategy & Research, 2020 Identity Fraud Report