The Airlines & Travel Payments Summit 2009 held a preconference session on fraud yesterday.

Managing online fraud is a significant cost for carriers around the world. CyberSource’s Paul Brock spoke on improving automation to increase fraud detection.  The key to identifying fraud is finding common characteristics, which can be used in automated detection and defining manual review processes.  Different channels have different risks and agent sales fraud has different characteristics than direct online sales.

Currently in the airline and travel segment on average 30% of transactions from the direct sales website are manually reviewed.  Manual review levels vary dramatically by geography and the airline’s experience in online sales.   The move to automation can save time and also lead to higher sales with lower false positives.

For more information on fraud rates and risk management practices of airlines and travel companies you can download the Airline Online Fraud Report 2009.