Breaking The Fraud Piece Of The Payments Puzzle

Whether we like it or not, fraud and identity theft play a significant role in the payments ecosystem.

Unfortunately for both consumers and payments players alike, this dangerous piece of the puzzle is growing at an astounding rate.

As Socure CEO Sunil Madhu recently explained during a discussion with PYMNTS, with the rollout of the EMV liability shift in the U.S. last year it’s no surprise that card-not-present fraud is on the rise.

EMV itself was developed back in 2005 and when the technology was first rolled out in Europe and Canada years ago, there was a significant shift migration from retail locations to digital online fraud. Madhu said this shift increased by over 150 percent in Europe and 75 percent in Canada, so there is an expectation the same pattern will be seen here in the U.S.

Even new technologies such as Apple Pay aren’t necessarily safe.

Apple’s payment wallet has experienced its fair share of controversy because identity theft caused fraud rates to rise in the Apple Pay ecosystem to 6 percent earlier this year, which is 60 times that of swiping cards, Madhu pointed out.

“With the introduction of new mobile apps and technologies that make it easy for us to pay, it’s also easy to commit fraud,” he added.

However, it’s clear that new technologies in the security space, such as those related to biometrics and authentication, are doing their best to combat the ever-growing fraud threat.

At the end of the day, as Madhu said, the ability to know who a consumer truly is allows a risk profile to be put around them, which is why it’s so critical to prove that someone is the person that they say they are while they’re performing a transaction.

As the muddy waters of fraud and identity theft continue to deepen, the industry may need to look to the emergence of new biometric technologies for help in clearing a path to authentication.