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Ethoca introduces free collaborative anti-fraud service for online merchants: ‘negative signals’ targets prevention of card-not-present (CNP) fraud

Ethoca introduces free collaborative anti-fraud service for online merchants:

‘negative signals’ targets prevention of card-not-present (CNP) fraud

 

Ethoca, provider of Ethoca360 fraud detection services, has announced that it is now accepting applications for a new and free service based on its flagship Ethoca360 Signals technology, targeted at helping online merchants prevent chargebacks and card-not-present (CNP) fraud.

 

Ethoca360 Signals is a fraud detection service that checks transactions in real-time against the Global Fraud Alliance (GFA) repository – a rapidly growing database of over 500 million historical transaction experiences compiled collaboratively by Alliance members – and identifies matches and patterns that indicate either fraud risk or a probable good order through intuitive colour-coded ‘warning signals’. Warning Signals that indicate fraud risk are referred to as ‘negative signals,’ while good transaction histories create ‘positive signals’.

 

Extending reach of fraud product

 

Ethoca said its new service, which makes the ‘negative signals’ from Ethoca360 Signals available for free is the first and only one of its kind. Although a commercial grade service, Ethoca decided to make it freely available to all online merchants in an effort to build broader industry collaboration and to stem the losses that are suffered to online fraud each year. For merchants who sign up now and until further notice, Ethoca has committed to keeping the negative signals version of Ethoca360 Signals free forever. The free service is scheduled to rollout in April 2010.

 

The free negative signals service can identify a history of chargebacks, fraud, data inconsistencies linked to the current order and other unwanted behaviours, according to the provider. It is built to augment merchants’ existing fraud management practices, adding information to their payment processing and fraud screening process that can't be obtained anywhere else. Negative signals information can be incorporated directly into merchants' fraud scoring, or used as decision support when manually reviewing orders. Offering single order, batch checking and real-time capabilities, Ethoca added that its free negative signals service is an exciting innovation for online fraud management, as there has never before been a quality resource of this nature available to merchants at no charge to help fight fraud.

 

Aiming to extend merchant collaboration

 

"Ethoca was founded on one simple fact, that knowing more about your customers enables better fraud prevention and that only through collaboration can merchants get a 360-degree picture of what they are dealing with," said Ethoca chief executive and co-founder, Andre Edelbrock.

 

“Our goal in making this negative service free to merchants selling in a card-not-present environment is to help all of them spot high-risk transactions that would otherwise have been missed. For example, does a credit card, name, or email address have a history of chargebacks, blacklist entries, rejections, or other negative data? Users will see immediately which orders match any negative data in the GFA database. By collaborating on a global scale, online merchants have the ability to make fraud a problem of the past, and by making our negative signals service available for free, we are one step closer to making that happen.”

 

"Joining together with the Global Fraud Alliance is one of the most important things we can do to help us make better order-processing decisions,” said Gilbert Fiorentino, chief executive officer of online computer retailer, TigerDirect. “What we love about the Ethoca network is if you're a multi-billion dollar company like we are, and you have huge resources to spend fighting credit card fraud, or if you're a small company with 20 or 30 employees, we all get the same benefit from sharing data with each other. If everybody joined the Ethoca network," Fiorentino added: "We could literally stamp out credit card fraud."