SECPAY LAUNCHES NEW FRAUD SCREENING

September 2006 - SECPay, the UK’s leading independent internet payment service provider, today announced the launch of a new fraud screening service “SECGuard” in a move to help online retailers fight the rising tide of cardholder not present fraud that is growing fastest on the internet. The development makes SECPay’s anti fraud portfolio one of the most comprehensive and flexible on the market. The enhanced fraud screening service is offered to SECPay’s customers’ in conjunction with 3rd Man, the UK’s leading internet fraud specialist screening company.

Following the compulsory introduction of chip and pin earlier this year, fraudulent transactions on the high street have declined massively, but fraudsters have increasingly turned their attentions to the internet.

As a result online payment gateways such as SECPay are having to develop new ways to combat this illegal activity, which cost £23 million in 2005, a 90% increase on the year before - a jump expected to repeat itself in yearly statistics for 2006 accordingly to industry analysts.

SECPay is now able to offer its clients a fraud risk score on every transaction once it has been though the screening process. In simple terms, merchants don’t have to become fraud screening specialists, the 95% of transactions that represent a low fraud risk are given the green light. Transactions at risk or unacceptable get amber or red lights accordingly.

SECGuard’s simple graphic approach will help retailers focus their resources on where they add most value, namely investigating high risk transactions.

Chris Dipple, Chief Technology Officer at SECPay says: “The new SECPay fraud screening service is a valuable addition to an already very strong product portfolio. It enables merchants to make better decisions when doing business online to mitigate their risk while still offering their customer’s high levels of customer service.”

The growth of internet retailing recently highlighted by the successful growth of John Lewis in developing their internet sales considerably faster than high street sales demonstrates just how important Fraud Screening services such as SECPay’s SECGuard are. Figures from Apacs showed £22 billion was spent over the internet last year by 26.6m people.

Having developed SECGuard to tackle fraud, SECPay is now turning it’s attention to the increasing use of identity fraud. They are currently testing the next phase of SECGuard development that will introduce identity verification services such as ID check and Credit Score as well as Fraud Risk Live that will provide online and live access to fraud risk analysts.

Dipple summarises the company’s developments in terms of what they provide for online merchants, “Out of necessity, banks have introduced measures that reduce their area of highest loss with chip and pin, the problem with this is that many of our clients suffered the fallout, their exposure to online fraud increased dramatically. Our technical team realised they could provide screening services that would have a very significant impact on reducing that exposure, so the key challenge was to make it easy to understand - after all how many retailers understand whether 37% risk factor is high, mid or low risk? Our traffic light system was a real breakthrough. It enables merchants a simple way of understanding their risk without turning them into fraud specialists.”

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