PCM vol. 3 Issue 9

THOUGHT LEADERS CORNER
Raise the bar
by Edoardo Fiorentini
Ifind it ironic that my book title got misinterpreted as a
guide for actual fraudsters. The English say goes exactly
“never judge a book by its cover” and many fell into this
small marketing trick. Nevertheless, the stories in the
book are meant to be a wake-up alarm for all e-commerce
business owners and managers who deal with fraud.
Fraudsters are highly evolved and it’s been many years that I
hear people in the industry stating that the good fraudsters,
you will never catch. But it’s time to stop.
Established businesses have decent rates in preventing fraud
to be an economic issue for the company, but smaller ones
need to outsource to third parties. Others are still convinced
that when you have a valid authorization, you will never get a
chargeback.
I’ve been providing trainings to Risk people for years and at
the time, everyone just works individually for his company.
People at conferences and meetings were surprised on how
freely I gave space to my mouth, sharing methods, processes,
rates and ideas. For free. But this happened only inside
this industry, basically pushing fraudsters towards less
sophisticated e-commerce webs.
DIt’s time to stop. How am I not responsible for the fraudster I
pushed away, when he targets a small shop who barely makes
the end of the month?
Fraudsters and the information they use, should be blocked
globally, to be effective. And while there are tons of initiatives
and “vertical” specific solutions, we are still just trying to
push fraudsters “somewhere else”.
I’ve decided I had enough and I won’t be an accomplice of
fraudsters going to their second on the list.
We need to stop their attempts on a global level. Everyone
in the industry needs to implement some fraud prevention
system — or hook to an existing one. Funny how this message
can be extrapolated also from the PSD2 directive…
While I have no doubt that many providers will comply
getting some sort of risk detection in place, many merchants
will be late for this train.
The book is for them. It’s my expert opinion of years spent
networking in this industry. You should be scared! You need
to put something in place to prevent AT LEAST these obvious
cases.
Many small merchants, however, won’t be able to react quickly.
The B&B on the green hills of Tuscany doesn’t have enough
volume to justify a fraud solution. And fraud providers need
a minimum transaction volume to justify the expertise, so he
can’t get anything? Or should he transform himself into an
antifraud expert?
Of course not, but reading my book should give them a general
sense of what is going on and how they should modify their
processes, just to be safe…
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