Tech, Global Network Of Merchants Can Combat Ecommerce Fraud

Emailage, the email risk assessment company, has found that during 2016 $1 billion in fraud was stopped by using technology and a syndicated network of global merchants.

In a press release, Emailage said it analyzed total volume amount of $100 billion from clients around the globe and found 40 million high-risk eCommerce transactions from airlines, ticketing and financial institutions.

“It’s pretty much impossible to use internet services without an email address today,” said Amador Testa, chief product officer at Emailage, in the press release. “When was the last time you opened an account or bought something online without an email address? We compare the email address to a digital passport, because it’s the true global identifier used by merchants, cloud services and even operating systems.”

With the rapid changes to the payment space driven by mobile devices, EMV and other solutions, online fraud will only continue to rise, said Emailage. Research by Aite predicts that by 2020 card-not-present (CNP) fraud will reach $7.2 billion in the U.S. alone at the same time consumers want ease of use when purchasing online and offline. Between these two trends, Emailage said email risk assessment is expected to play a key role in expediting legitimate transactions without causing friction while keeping fraudsters at bay. Emailage said it will present its full results at the Merchant Risk Council Conference being held from March 13 to 16 in Las Vegas.

CNP fraud is on the rise in the U.S. with Research and Markets reporting recently that eCommerce merchants, particularly in the U.S., are in a perfect storm of rapid online sales growth at the same time that the credit card industry is continuing to transition to EMV chip technology. Those trends leave the merchants vulnerable to CNP fraud. The researchers pointed to the breaches of payment card data at major retailers including Target and Home Depot during the last few years as providing the bad guys with a treasure trove of millions of cardholders’ data that is still being used by thieves to commit this type of fraud.