AF Education
2020 Priorities: Pre-Authorization Risk Screening, CCPA & More!
The record number of data breaches in 2019 serves as a great reminder of why new advances in digital identity verification (DIDV) are increasingly critical. However, I didn’t close out the year thinking about the exceptionally high occurrence in data breach rates. Instead, I chose to focus on the hard-won battles businesses have fought...
Fraud Screening for Retailers: Prepare for Volume Spikes
Retailers spend all year getting their product selection, inventory, logistics and marketing ready for year-end peak sales seasons, but they often don’t adjust their fraud screening tools for sales peaks. Surprisingly, this oversight may not lead to more fraud but to more false declines. Why would otherwise dependable fraud screening rules and...
Intro to Synthetic ID's From a Former FBI Fraud Fighter
Basics & Background In layman’s terms, a synthetic ID is created when a fraudster takes a real or fake social security number (SSN), builds a completely false persona around it (including credit tradelines, ID cards, the works), and uses the fake persona to obtain credit and cash, then disappears… leaving the financial...
Ad Fraud: The Silent Revenue Killer
Fraud is a well-known threat to every online company. Because of that, nearly every company has some solution for handling transaction fraud, reducing chargebacks, and verifying customers. The biggest reason for this is because companies can see the effects of transaction fraud immediately and easily recognize the drain on their revenue. Ad...
Building FACT to Help Airlines Fight Fraud
The growth of online payments in the last two decades means that a vast amount of financial information, particularly payment card data, is stored on the Internet. Hackers can break into databases, download the payment card information and then sell it to buyers on the dark web. This stolen card data is...
SIM Swap Fraud: Don’t Be Its Next Victim
For many victims of SIM swap fraud, the first time they learn about the attack is in the hours after their life has been changed forever. It’s an all too common story, the signal bars disappear from your mobile phone, you call the phone number – it rings, but it’s not your...
Auto Lending Fraud: The Lies People Tell on Applications
Financing a car is easy. You pick out your brand-new car. You walk into the finance manager’s office. You give your name, address, social security number and a few other pieces of personal information and you can walk out of the auto dealership with keys to that car, sometimes with little or...
ATO Attacks: What They Are and How to Foil Them
It’s more important than ever for merchants to make sure their customers are returning to make repeat purchases as the e-commerce landscape becomes more saturated. One of the best means for improving customer loyalty is to offer accounts for your online store which customers can use to check out faster, get tailored...
What Does Machine Learning Mean for Fraud Prevention?
Everyone in fraud prevention must have heard the term machine learning bandied about in discussions about the changing nature of their work. However, the recent hype suggests that some of the people promoting machine learning solutions are either overstating or misrepresenting what the technology is currently doing and what it is capable...
What VCR Really Means for Merchants
Visa Claims Resolution (VCR) is the biggest dispute policy update the payments industry has experienced in decades. Every stakeholder has been impacted, with requirements changing for cardholders, issuers, acquirers, and merchants. An unintended challenge of VCR is ensuring each stakeholder has the information and insight they need to comply with--and benefit from--the...