When it comes to identifying bad actors, data collaboration is crucial according to Rahul Das, Director of Payments at LiveScore Group.
Das was speaking to Payment Expert ahead of the Payment Expert Summit in Lisbon, as he explained that without adequate data sharing across departments it is ‘ hard to spot the bad guys from the good’.
In today/s highly digitized and tech driven world, response teams need to be enlightened and multifaceted when it comes to tackling sophisticated fraudsters.
The need for mature and effective strategies comes at a time when the digital evolution accelerates and online transaction volumes continue to grow.
In terms of adapting to new challenges, Das stated: “The first challenge is to frame the nature of fraud: PSD2 means that payment transactions are authenticated/challenged, so chargebacks are at all-time lows, but that doesn’t mean there’s no fraud.
“We are seeing an uptick in impersonation fraud, as syndicates try to deploy the personal data stolen from genuine individuals to create accounts to exploit acquisition bonuses.
“It’s an arms-race against the syndicates, who are well-trained, technically capable, and of course motivated – operators need to deploy new technologies, payments methods, and masses of analytics resources to identify the patterns of abuse and close it down.”
He continued by emphasizing that there are key lessons that can be learnt from the financial sector, specifically in terms of the user experience offered by challenger banks.
“The fintech sector has also helped make consumers more comfortable with verifying their identity electronically (e.g. biometric video checks on top of document capture and using/sharing data via Open Banking). Operators can benefit from this consumer familiarity and deploy new technologies with a little less worry now.
“For example, 3D Secure is ubiquitous after the PSD2 rollout – gone are the days when ‘walkaways’ and ‘cart abandonment’ were a major worry. Now, we see an uplift in acceptance rates when 3D Secure is enabled.
“This is a tricky one and very quickly lands up in a ‘build vs. buy’ discussion. While Payments are a source of success for a business, it’s not really core to the business model from a technology perspective.
“This is possibly where my views diverge from a lot of my peers – if we have five developers assigned to a payments workstream to work on improving the user experience, I think it’s money well spent.
“But if they are instead working on updating SDKs and APIs to the latest iteration from a PSP – with no discernible uplift to the user experience/fraud rate – then it’s best to outsource it and hand the developers over to the Gaming or Sportsbook teams.”
Rahul Das is one of many key payments and betting stakeholders speaking at the The Payment Expert Summit, part of the upcoming SBC Summit, at the Feira Internacional de Lisboa from September 25-26.
