It sounds like a line on a piece of junk mail you may throw in the trash without even opening the envelope. But this topic is becoming a growing problem for retailers who sell online. If your dealership has an e-commerce site that is taking orders and perhaps even offering a “pick-up in store” option, you could also be at risk for fraud.
We recently participated in a webinar with Kount, a fraud protection company. Kount helps online businesses boost sales by reducing fraud and allowing them to accept more orders. CEO Brad Wiskirchen illustrates with the following example, “Let’s say you’re buying something from our customer, Staples.com. You click ‘place my order’, Staples takes your information, sends it to us, and in 250 to 350 milliseconds (faster than the blink of an eye) we tell them, ‘This is likely to be a fraudulent transaction.’”
Kount’s all-in-one SaaS platform is designed for merchants operating in card-not-present environments, simplifying fraud detection dramatically.
We also spoke to some dealers to gauge what is going on in the powersports world in terms of fraud, and some of the responses were surprising. Most of the dealers we spoke to said they’ve seen the number of chargebacks reduced because they are holding more orders for review. This takes time and energy and often times a dedicated staff to police the orders. One dealer said they had discovered nearly all of their GoPro orders were in fact fraudulent orders.
This dealer also said that early on when they first started their e-commerce site that they had a big order that turned out to be fraudulent, losing $5,000 on that one order.
Kount VP of Marketing Don Bush says that fraud related to EMV (chip cards) has increased in the U.S. because now it is moving online to card-not-present transactions. Fraudsters are finding plenty of tools online to buy stolen credit card information. Bush says that often times the retailer will have no idea the card is stolen or fake because all of the information appears correct. However, Kount is able to use complex systems to check databases against each transaction to raise possible red flags.
Bush says that there are some things that dealers can do to lower the risk by employing the following: Audit your current system on an annual basis; Outsource their fraud management; Look into your own data to determine normal behavior; Place multiple layers of technology in the way of fraudsters; Employ a data-driven solution; and consistent and ongoing staff training for fraud.
To download an e-book on the subject, go to: info.kount.com/ebooks/automotive-and-powersports-fraud-prevention-tune-up
You can also download the webinar here: http://info.kount.com/webinar/powersports-automotive-webinar.