The challenge of bolstering customer experience, while accurately preventing new forms of fraud and abuse

As customer expectations have reached an all-time high, Michael Reitblat, CEO at Forter shares knowledge on how to bolster customer experience, while preventing fraud

In today’s ever-expanding global digital market, customer experience is a critical factor for business success. Merchants face a fundamental challenge between managing risk and stopping fraud, without impacting the great customer experience their shoppers expect. This is compounded by the fact that fraud attempts persist and that the dollar amount of fraud has increased by 12% in 2019, as reported in the seventh edition of Forter’s Fraud Attack Index.

Alongside expanding customer expectations, fraud prevention solutions must likewise accommodate the shifting global privacy and compliance landscape. The recent Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) EU legislation, designed to create a more competitive payment landscape and to ensure consumer protection across payment types, has also brought confusion and prescriptive requirements for how merchants must comply. Under the umbrella of PSD2, Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) aims to minimise online fraud by requiring customers to authenticate their identities. Both PSD2 and its SCA requirements increase friction in consumers’ shopping experience. Businesses, therefore, need to solve the critical issue of compliance while maintaining the ability to offer a streamlined customer journey.

The impact of the new consumer norms

Customer expectations have reached an all-time high. Forter data indicates that the average online shopper will wait just 10 seconds for their credit card to be verified before abandoning their purchase or navigating to another webpage.

Furthermore, half of Americans agree that they’re less likely to buy something online if the entire checkout process takes longer than 30 seconds. As such, ensuring a friction-free shopping experience is essential as digital commerce grows increasingly more competitive, with shoppers having more options than ever before to obtain the products they desire.

A better way forward

Only through leveraging a fully automated, integrated fraud prevention platform can merchants meet rising consumer expectations while maintaining best-in-class fraud prevention. We enable businesses to deliver a seamless customer experience by providing automated decisions in real-time across all touch points and interactions. Our PSD2 solution enables merchants to automatically evaluate the risk of each transaction and route it through the path of least possible friction, ensuring compliance while bolstering conversion rates. Moreover, the innovative technology we have in place enables merchants to distinguish between legitimate customers and fraudsters with the utmost accuracy – reducing fraud costs, improving approval rates, and delivering the best customer experience possible.

With over USD 150 billion in processed ecommerce transactions annually, our platform boasts a robust network of data that powers its ability to make the most accurate approve/decline decisions throughout the customer journey - every touch point, every interaction, every time.

Each decision is the result of complex machine learning analysis that evaluates thousands of different data points – including behavioural data, device information, data across our network of enterprise clients, and more – ensuring the most accurate results possible.

A unified and fully integrated fraud platform

Instead of multiple independent tools working in silos to solve different fraud pain points and problems, Forter’s integrated fraud platform unifies these efforts – protecting 100% of the customer journey and evaluating 100% of transactions and touch points for every merchant. Our system also leverages data and customer behaviour across our global network of enterprise businesses to provide the most comprehensive view of consumers, so that merchants are always protected from fraud. Our global merchant network has seen over 525 million unique users. In the US over 96% of online transactions today are actually made by customers that are already known to Forter’s system.

This holistic view of data and customer interactions means our clients benefit from the wealth and depth of knowledge Forter possesses, well beyond the point of transaction. The scale of the Forter network means the system can identify fraud patterns and attacks across the entire globe, protecting merchants before they can be hit. Beyond a simple reliance on machine learning rules, we also invest in predictive fraud research and modelling – staying one step ahead of fraudsters and fraud trends across markets and industries. Our dedicated team of fraud experts and data scientists constantly researches fraud patterns and attack vectors, ensuring Forter’s platform consistently achieves higher accuracy while leveraging ongoing research inputs to deliver superior performance.

Tailored to fit your needs

Forter provides merchants with an entirely customised solution. Forter’s machine learning solution is tailored for each and every merchant to ensure maximum accuracy and performance.

We collaborate directly with the business and leverage the merchant team’s feedback and internal expertise to continually improve performance. A one-size-fits-all solution simply cannot keep pace with shifting industry norms, fraud trends, or specific merchant business models, risk profiles, geography, and more. We instead offer merchants the assurance that their fraud prevention needs meet their business goals.

This editorial was first published in the Fraud Prevention and Online Authentication Report 2019/2020. The Guide covers some of the security challenges encountered in the ecommerce and banking, and financial services ecosystems. Moreover, it provides payment and fraud and risk management professionals with a series of insightful perspectives on key aspects, such as fraud management, identity verification, online authentication, and regulation.

About Michael Reitblat

Michael is the CEO and Co-Founder of Forter, the leading commerce fraud prevention platform. Prior to founding Forter, Michael led product and business development at multiple successful Israeli startups, including Pango, Kontera (acquired by Singtel), Fraud Sciences (acquired by PayPal), and Imperva NASDAQ: IMPV. Michael’s fascination with online fraudsters began following a successful “self-experimentation with the Internet” phase as a teenager and an even more successful period of service as an intelligence officer in the Israeli Cyber Command. Michael also serves as a board member and investor and several cutting-edge technology companies in AI, Robotics, and Exascale Computing.

About Forter

Forter is the leader in ecommerce fraud prevention, protecting over USD 140 billion in online commerce transactions for over 600 million consumers globally. The company’s integrated fraud prevention platform distinguishes between legitimate customers and fraudulent activity in real-time, throughout all online consumer experiences and touch points.