Travel
Industry
We help many of the largest global airlines, major hotel chains, online travel agencies and car rental agencies prevent account takeover and other types of travel industry fraud.
Competition is intense in the travel industry. So, it is important for these companies to exercise fraud prevention, without inconveniencing loyal customers.
Fraudsters who target airlines and other travel industries are sophisticated and nimble. To avoid lost revenue, open seats, and unhappy customers, airline fraud professionals need to correlate and analyze an increasing number of internal and external data sources.
This includes using automation and machine learning to quickly identify and thwart the following fraudulent activities:
Airline Industry Transaction Fraud
Stolen credit cards are frequently used to purchase flights. In many cases, these itineraries are booked at the last minute, or booked well in advance and then exchanged for a more immediate departure to avoid scrutiny. It is important for airlines to be able to flag last-minute bookings and exchanges–especially those with departure dates or locations that are dramatically different than the original itinerary. Aligning the departure city, credit card holder location, customer loyalty history, and IP address can often reveal fraudulent behavior and transactions.
Account Takeover
Account takeover is a growing problem in the travel industry – especially for airlines and hotels. Fraudsters hack into loyalty and mileage plan accounts to access accrued miles and points. Once they are in an account, they can use the miles for flights and marketplace purchases, book hotel rooms or transfer them to a different account. Merchants need the ability to identify and confront account takeovers without creating a negative experience for valid customers. With the right tools, they can automatically identify suspicious account activity and conduct authentication measures without creating unnecessary problems for valid account holders. They should also restrict new loyalty program members from buying miles as their first transaction and monitor account holders who transfer miles frequently or in large quantities.
Rewards Abuse
Rewards abuse is another travel industry fraud problem that has been increasing. Fraudsters purchase high-priced airline tickets to attain points from their credit card company and then cancel the ticket after they have used or sold the points. This creates excessive cancellations, takes up valuable seats and results in lost revenue for airlines.Therefore, fraud teams need the ability to flag and monitor individuals who cancel and refund tickets more frequently than average.
Counterfeit Card Fraud
Credit card fraud is nothing new, but with airline websites and call centers becoming more sophisticated and secure, fraudsters are booking flights at ticket counters using fake credit cards. Since many ticket counters don’t use EMV chip technology, they don’t have the ability to quickly identify counterfeit cards and transactions. It is easier to identify and prevent fraudulent transactions if you have more data you can correlate and analyze. With only a name and card number, counterfeit card fraud is difficult to detect. Therefore, face-to-face transactions need to be aligned with eCommerce authentication measures.
