Total Wine & More plans to implement technology from Forter that relies on AI and data to detect ecommerce fraud. The new strategy, to improve the way the wine retailer protects consumers from
credit card fraud, kicks off in early July.
“The technology from Forter can interpret your keystrokes and how you move from page to page on our website,” said John Velke, senior
vice president of risk management at Total Wine & More. “Many fraudsters are in overseas countries. It’s their livelihood. They move fast. They want to get on and off
websites.”
Screening keystrokes is one in about 6,000 data points that Forter’s ecommerce technology monitors. The fraud software company processes about $30 billion worth of
transactions annually for clients. The technology determines the probability of fraud by analyzing IP addresses, the amount of time spent on a website page, time of day, brand name, clicks, and cost
of the product.
Based on the billions of transactions the technology can immediately approve or decline the purchase for the retailer.
Today there are about 600 variables that could
trigger a fraud alert. If the net of all the scores exceeds 1,500 points, the ecommerce order gets out-sorted to customer service to validate the purchase.
The technology from Forter will
allow Total Wine & More to approve more orders faster, Velke said. “Customers in our loyalty program will also see faster transitions,” he said. “Even those who sometimes hit our
velocity rules by shopping with use two to three times weekly, we will be able to identify their pattern and recognize this is a customer who frequently buys online.”
“Average
fraud attack rates remain 2.5 times higher than they were in early 2015, and imprecise fraud detection loses e-commerce merchants more than $20 billion each year,” wrote Forter CEO and
co-founder Michael Reitblat in an email. Reitblat also claims Forter’s system not only detects fraud, but stops legitimate purchases from being accidentally identified as
fraudulent.
Retailers continue to report increased online fraud. The 2017 LexisNexis True Cost of Fraud Report estimates that ecommerce companies experience more fraud attempts -- at 43% --
per month compared with other kinds of companies. Overall, for every $1 of fraud its costs organizations between $2.48 and $2.82, which means that fraud costs them more than roughly 2.5 times the
actual loss itself. The study surveyed 1,196 risk and fraud executives during March and April 2017.