Fraud in payment systems is growing inexorably. Although, fraud as a percentage of the total value of payments processed may be dropping but globally, gross overall fraud is growing. Two recent developments in fraud control show how banks and corporates are tackling the growing fraud problem.

Société Générale extends use of SWIFT's 3SKey to UK
SocGen is already using 3SKey extensively in France to enable corporate customers to sign digitally  files of payments sent to the bank over a variety of channels. The bank is now rolling out the solution to provide secure login authentication for its UK corporate customers that access the bank's international cash management services via its proprietary web banking portal, Sogecash Web.

Currently, 3SKey is offered in more than 50 countries, with 26 banking groups subscribing to the service, and 45 application providers have integrated 3SKey into their solutions.

Visa releases new authentication service
The newly launched Visa Consumer Authentication Service is aimed at supporting payment card issuer's Three Domain Secure (3-D Secure) programme such as Verified by Visa and is available in all Visa markets.

The Visa Consumer Authentication Service authenticates the consumer prior to the authorization process, adding a layer of protection against fraud. As the consumer begins the online checkout process, the solution performs a risk assessment of the transaction based on numerous inputs, including device and transaction information and historical spending patterns. The result is that payment card issuers can complete lower risk e-commerce transactions without requiring consumers to go through the extra step of entering their passwords or other verification.

Visa Consumer Authentication Service is a hosted access control server which provides issuers with the following capabilities:

• risk-based authentication - Visa Consumer Authentication Service's risk-scoring model takes into account upgraded inputs, including critical information about the device, transaction information and spending profiles;
• methods of authentication - Visa Consumer Authentication Service supports a range of account holder authentication methods
• support for mobile - Visa Consumer Authentication Service can be integrated to function through a range of devices, including mobile devices and tablets, to ensure consumers have a secure payment experience when shopping through another channel beyond the PC
• rules for strategy refinement - Visa Consumer Authentication Service provides issuers with the tools to write additional rules to refine risk management capabilities.

 

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SocGen's extension of the 3SKey usage to the UK is part of the general move to digitally signing of payment files sent to banks. Visa's real-time risk assessment of transactions is much more important. It is based on numerous inputs including device and transaction information and historical spending patterns. This is the future of fraud prevention. In the long term, most business transactions will be verified in this way.