Airline tickets are high-value items, and therefore very appealing to fraudsters. However, simply ramping up anti-fraud measures is not the answer. Genuine bookings are rejected unnecessarily and demand on fraud personnel increase, meaning higher costs. It is critical that the right balance is struck between accepting legitimate customer bookings and stopping fraud.
Enter South African Airways, the national flag carrier and the largest airline in South Africa. Although they had a layered defence system in place, they were unable to confirm fraud with card issuers and had no way of verifying suspicious transactions. Torn between possibly letting fraud slip through and insulting good customers, they decided to take action and join the Ethoca Network.
Stop Fraud – Today and in the Future
Ethoca Alerts provides South African Airways (SAA) with confirmed fraud intelligence in days, hours or even minutes, rather than weeks. This lets them stop fraud today before it is too late. Ethoca Alerts also empowers SAA to perform link analysis using customer names and gives insight into travel agency bookings, which is extremely beneficial in stopping the fraud that they would not have otherwise detected. All alerted transaction details such as IP, email addresses and customer names, are used to greatly enhance negative lists. Finally, by analysing Ethoca Alerts over time they are able to identify trends and modify business rules currently used in their other fraud prevention tools. The end result? Less fraud today, less fraud tomorrow.
Improve Sales Enablement – Ethoca Alerts are your Parachute
SAA, like all online merchants, was looking for ways to make the sales process easier for customers. By having Ethoca as an additional layer of protection in their fraud prevention toolkit, they are able to confidently accept payments from customers without making them jump through additional hoops – knowing that Ethoca Alerts will capture any fraud that slips through.
Ease of Use and Powerful Results
Using Ethoca Alerts is easy. As soon as SAA get an email notification, they quickly log on to the secure web portal and review the alert. Because it is confirmed fraud, they have total confidence and are able to take swift and decisive action. The transaction is stopped, the booking cancelled and – in certain cases – airport security is warned and the fraudster apprehended.
What has proven to be the primary benefits of Ethoca Alerts?“Definitely a reduction in chargebacks and fraud losses. Aside from the immediate fraud-stopping power of each alert, the tool enables us to perform link analysis using customer names. This lets us stop the fraud that we would have missed otherwise.”
How is Ethoca Alerts enabling you to provide a better customer experience?“With Ethoca Alerts catching the fraud that sometimes slips through our other defences, we can confidently accept more payments from customers without creating friction at checkout.”
How has Ethoca Alerts improved your fraud rules and models?“By analysing the alerts we receive, we have been able to identify trends and modify the business rules that are currently used in our fraud prevention tool – strengthening its effectiveness.”
Benefits for airlines
• Lower fraud losses (recovery of goods and services)• Reduce fraud levels through link analysis• Reduce future fraud through improved fraud screening (adding data to negative lists)• Reduce dispute resolution processing expenses• Because alerts are confirmed fraud, accuracy is ensured• Issuing more refunds promotes higher issuer acceptance and improves the customer experience.
To learn more about Ethoca, visit www.ethoca.com
About Keith Briscoe
With more than 20 years of experience in the payments industry, Keith leads Ethoca’s global product and marketing strategy and day-to-day execution. This includes the product development and go-to-market programs for Ethoca’s core product – Ethoca Alerts – as well as a new generation of fraud mitigation and transaction acceptance innovations that leverage Ethoca’s global card issuer-merchant collaboration network.
About Ethoca
Leveraging a growing, global network of hundreds of card issuers and thousands of ecommerce merchants, Ethoca is the leading provider of collaboration-based technology. Their innovative solutions enable both issuers and merchants to increase card acceptance, stop fraud, recover lost revenue and eliminate chargebacks from fraud and customer service disputes.
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