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July 13, 2021

On the web

Return Scams Jump As Fraudsters Exploit E-commerce Boom

Wall Street Journal

“Retailers say they are seeing a sharp increase in a type of return fraud in which consumers claim they never received their online orders even though they did. The practice, known as “item not received” fraud, took off during the pandemic, when warehouses were backed up and carriers were overwhelmed by a surge in e-commerce orders . In some cases, consumers are hiring professional fraudsters, who market their services on social media and advertise refunds of as much as $20,000 at chains such as Amazon . com Inc., Walmart Inc. and Target Corp.”

June 25, 2021

On the wires

New Outseer Fraud & Payments Report Confirms Massive Increase in Brand Abuse Cyber Attacks, Jumping 158% From Q1 2020

“Phishing attacks designed to harvest user credentials represented 25% of all attack types for the quarter, followed by rogue mobile apps at 21%. Although the share of rogue mobile apps decreased slightly from the previous quarter, it is worth noting that this attack type increased by 14% in the same quarter vs. 2020. At just 7% of mix, Trojan Horse attacks injecting malware designed to harvest sensitive information and user credentials dropped again as threat actors have shifted fraud strategies to Brand Abuse.”

June 2, 2021

On the web

AmEx Expands Its Fraud Detection Application to Three Major Platforms

Digital Transactions

“In an effort to stymie card-not-present fraud, which has been on the rise during the Covid-19 pandemic, American Express Co. on Wednesday announced its Enhanced Authorization fraud-detection application is being made available to three major platforms—those of Accertify Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Riskified Ltd.—via an application programming interface…AmEx’s software enables merchants to share digital attributes that can help validate a transaction and cardholder, such as the customer’s email, Internet protocol and shipping address, and phone number. Including such attributes in a fraud screen, along with other data gathered by AmEx, can reduce online fraud by as much as 60% and increase approval rates by an average of 50 basis points, AmEx says.”

May 25, 2021

On the web

Forter Raises $300M on a $3B Valuation to Combat E-commerce Fraud

TechCrunch

“E-commerce is on the rise, but that also means the risk, and occurrence, of e-commerce fraud is, too. Now, Forter , one of the startups building a business to tackle that malicious activity, has closed $300 million in funding — a sign both of the size of the issue, and its success in tackling it to date. The new funding, a Series F, values Forter at $3 billion — notable not least because the funding is coming only about six months since Forter’s previous round , a $125 million Series E that valued it at over $1.3 billion.”

On the wires

Sift to Acquire Chargeback, Providing Merchants With Complete Protection Against Payment Fraud

Sift , the leader in Digital Trust & Safety, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Chargeback , the pioneer in real-time dispute management for merchants. The two companies are coming together as both e-commerce growth and payment fraud are accelerating, and as the Fraud Economy—the sophisticated and interconnected network of cybercriminals and their methods—has rapidly expanded.”

April 15, 2021

On the wires

Forter Partners With Flutterwave to Drive ECommerce Growth Across Africa and Beyond

Forter , the leader in e-commerce fraud prevention, has announced a partnership with Flutterwave, Africa’s leading payments technology company. The partnership, the first of its kind in Africa, will enable merchants to accurately identify legitimate buyers from fraudsters, resulting in increased transaction approvals and reduced friction in the purchasing experience, all without the fear of fraud.”

Signifyd Closes $205M Investment in Commerce Protection

“With the $205 million funding round that Signifyd announced today, the fraud and consumer abuse leader is among the companies that will lead ecommerce into a new era marked by new consumer habits and new requirements for retailers…In the years since, they have consistently extended the sort of guaranteed protection Signifyd provides merchants. The company’s move now to extend its identity-centric commerce protection and payment optimization deeper into the payment journey is the next logical step in what Ramanand and Liberty set out to do.”

April 12, 2021

On the web

PayPal Rolls Out New Fraud Management Tools for Merchants | ZDNet

ZDNet

“PayPal is launching a new suite of fraud management features for mid-market and enterprise businesses that aims to help combat the rise in online payments fraud brought on by the pandemic… According to PayPal, its new Fraud Protection Advanced service uses device fingerprinting, machine learning and analytics to help businesses identify, investigate, resolve and mitigate fraudulent transactions. The technology allows for real-time data modeling to help businesses spot shifting fraud patterns, and enables high fraud decisioning performance that can lead to lower chargebacks and false declines.”

April 9, 2021

On the web

How Online Scammers Fooled One of Africa’s Biggest Fintech Startups

Quartz

“In Nigeria, for example, Paystack requires prospective customers to submit the bank verification number (BVN) of any director or trustee, the certificate of registration from the Corporate Affairs Commission, the Nigerian agency responsible for the registration of for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and a corporate bank account. Similar requirements also apply to Ghana and South Africa where the company has extended its service. It’s not entirely clear whether Paystack failed to properly vet the scammers, or whether current rules are not stringent enough to detect dubious customers.”

February 4, 2021

On the wires

New Data Shows FTC Received 2.2 Million Fraud Reports From Consumers in 2020

“The Federal Trade Commission received more than 2.1 million fraud reports from consumers in 2020, according to newly released data, with imposter scams remaining the most common type of fraud reported to the agency. Online shopping was the second-most common fraud category reported by consumers, elevated by a surge of reports in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Internet services; prizes, sweepstakes, and lotteries; and telephone and mobile services rounded out the top five fraud categories.”

November 20, 2020

On the web

Forter raises $125 million at a $1.3 billion valuation to combat ecommerce fraud with AI

VentureBeat

Forter , an automated fraud detection platform for ecommerce , has raised $125 million in a series E round that values the company at over $1.3 billion. The raise comes as ecommerce transactions surge under pandemic-driven lockdowns. But the throngs of people jumping online to shop have opened the floodgates to fraud . Recent data suggests digital fraud attacks have doubled in 2020, while the U.K. reported that financial fraud attempts rose by up to a third as the country entered lockdown.”

July 28, 2020

On the wires

ACI Worldwide and Arvato Financial Solutions Partner to Combat eCommerce Fraud

ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, today announced a strategic partnership with Arvato Financial Solutions to combat the rising levels of eCommerce fraud during the Covid-19 crisis. As part of the collaboration, ACI is offering Arvato Financial Solutions’ best-in-class Manual Order Review service to all its merchant fraud customers globally. The solution enables merchants across all sectors to further optimize their fraud management performance.”

July 22, 2020

On the wires

ACI Worldwide and Three UK Partner to Combat eCommerce Payments Fraud

ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, today announced it is extending its partnership with Three UK to combat eCommerce fraud, which has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic. The telco leader will enhance its online fraud management and prevention efforts by leveraging ACI’s award-winning fraud management offering ReD Shield, part of ACI’s UP Payments Risk Management solution.”

June 2, 2020

On the wires

Barclaycard Payments Partners With Kount to Deliver Industry-leading Fraud Prevention and Prepare Businesses for Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)

“Barclaycard Payments, which processes almost 40 per cent of card transactions in the UK, has announced a new partnership with leading fraud prevention provider Kount to give Barclays Transact customers access to award-winning fraud detection software. Barclays Transact is a suite of tools designed to help merchants make their online transactions both simpler and safer. Transact’s new fraud module, powered by Kount, uses complex data linking within the Identity Trust Global Network and artificial intelligence algorithms to detect fraudulent transactions in real-time, at the point of check-out, helping protect the business from false positives and chargebacks.”

May 29, 2020

On the wires

Vesta Secures $125 Million Investment From Goldfinch Partners

Vesta , a fintech pioneer in fraud protection and fully guaranteed payment technologies, has secured $125 million in new growth capital from private equity firm Goldfinch Partners . The funding will provide Vesta with the resources to invest in growth and continue the global deployment of its fraud protection and e-commerce payment solutions. Vesta enables e-commerce companies to grow their businesses by focusing on revenue rather than risk, with its zero-risk and zero-liability payment guarantee. Vesta’s real-time decisioning platform — built on data science and machine learning with more than 25 years of intelligence — analyzes customers’ online payment transactions to assess the risk of fraud.”

May 20, 2020

On the wires

November 21, 2018

On the web

E-commerce site is infected not by one, but two card skimmers

Ars Technica

“Payment card skimming that steals consumers’ personal information from e-commerce sites has become a booming industry over the past six months, with high-profile attacks against Ticketmaster, British AirwaysNewegg, and Alex Jones’ InfoWars, to name just a few. In a sign of the times, security researcher Jérôme Segura found two competing groups going head to head with each other for control of a single vulnerable site.”

November 5, 2018

On the web

Who’s In Your Online Shopping Cart?

Krebs on Security

“Crooks who hack online merchants to steal payment card data are constantly coming up with crafty ways to hide their malicious code on Web sites. In Internet ages past, this often meant obfuscating it as giant blobs of gibberish text that was obvious even to the untrained eye. These days, a compromised e-commerce site is more likely to be seeded with a tiny snippet of code that invokes a hostile domain which appears harmless or that is virtually indistinguishable from the hacked site’s own domain.”

September 12, 2018

On the web

HOW HACKERS SLIPPED BY BRITISH AIRWAYS’ DEFENSES

Wired

ON FRIDAY, BRITISH Airways disclosed a data breach impacting customer information from roughly 380,000 booking transactions made between August 21 and September 5 of this year. The company said that names, addresses, email addresses, and sensitive payment card details were all compromised. Now, researchers from the threat detection firm RiskIQ have shed new light on how the attackers pulled off the heist.”

September 6, 2018

On the web

July 27, 2018

On the web

Feedzai To Help Credorax Fight Merchant Fraud

BankingTech

“A technology company founded in 2008 that was among the first to transition into a fully-licensed commercial bank, Credorax credits itself as the first bank designed for e-commerce. A specialist in merchant acquiring, the firm has merchant acquiring banking licences in 32 countries in Europe. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in San Mateo, California, Feedzai uses big data technology to stop payment fraud in real-time, and uses machine learning models to reduce incidents of false alarms.”

June 21, 2018

On the wires

ASC X9 Publishes New Report On Card-Not-Present Fraud Mitigation And White Paper On Distributed Ledger/Blockchain Technologies

Business Wire

“Today the Accredited Standards Committee X9 Inc. (X9) announced the publication of two new documents: Technical Report 48 – “Card-Not-Present (CNP) Fraud Mitigation in the United States: Strategies for Preventing, Detecting, and Responding to a Growing Threat” and a white paper from the X9 Distributed Ledger and Blockchain Technology Study Group. TR 48 summarizes guidelines to mitigate CNP fraud in the U.S. It identifies the primary types of CNP fraud attack trends currently affecting the payments industry, and it outlines the types of CNP fraud mitigation tools and strategies employed by industry stakeholders. The document also provides information and recommendations for industry stakeholders to evaluate their current approaches for mitigating CNP fraud and reducing overall fraud losses. TR 48 is available for download now.”

June 20, 2018

Top Post

Europol Takes Down E-commerce Fraud Gang

BankingTech

“The suspects arrested during the operation were responsible for more than 20,000 fraudulent transactions with compromised credit cards, with an estimated value exceeding €8 million. The action was coordinated by the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) from Europol’s headquarters in The Hague. It received the direct assistance from merchants, logistic companies, and banks and payment card schemes. Europol also supported national authorities on-the-spot by providing analytical services in their investigations.”

May 9, 2018

On the web

Online shopping fraud up—particularly in two categories

Chain Store Age

“Total online shopping fraud increased 30% in 2017, according to a report from Experian Information Systems. The rise was most dramatic in shipping, where it rose to 37% in 2017 over the previous year, and billing, where the rate increased 34%. (Shipping fraud occurs when a criminal uses their address for the delivery of stolen goods purchased online. Billing fraud occurs when the victim’s address is tied to the payment account used to purchase the stolen goods.)”

May 7, 2018

On the web

Risk Levels Surge for E-Commerce And for Payment Processors, Finds ThreatMetrix

Digital Transactions News

“E-commerce attacks increased 93% in the first quarter of 2018 in comparison to the same quarter a year ago, finds the Q1 2018 Cybercrime Report from ThreatMetrix, a unit of LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Based on an analysis of 210 million attacks ThreatMetrix detected and stopped on behalf of its clients, the report found that most e-commerce attacks are targeting account logins and creation, 71%, with attacks to get payment data accounting for 29% of volume.”

April 18, 2018

Top Post

Stripe debuts Radar anti-fraud AI for big business

TechCrunch

“Cybersecurity continues to be a growing focus and problem in the digital world, and now Stripe  is launching a new paid product that it hopes will help its customers better battle one of the bigger side-effects of data breaches: online payment fraud. Today, Stripe is announcing Radar for Fraud Teams, an expansion of its free AI-based Radar service that runs alongside Stripe’s core payments API to help identify and block fraudulent transactions.”

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