QVC and Shop Direct among retailers to pool data for anti-fraud scheme
QVC and Shop Direct are among the retailers to have joined forces for an anti-fraud scheme, TRADE (Transactis Risk Assessment Data Exchange), which pools shared transactional data to enable the detection of potential fraudsters in real-time.
First and third party data is drawn from individual consumers as well as on addresses so that, through data matching techniques, retailers can weed out fraudsters using multiple identities across several organisations as well as other tactics for masking dishonest activities.
“Previously, we’ve had to rely on data developed for use by financial institutions, which does not fully address the very specific cyber threats that online retailers are facing today,” explained John Pears, director of credit risk and operations at Shop Direct, parent company of Littlewoods.com, Isme.com, and Very.com.
“The retail industry – especially the companies involved in ecommerce and other forms of home shopping – needs a system that takes this type of loss prevention to the next level,” he added.
The data also allows merchants to assess the loss risk across processes such as ordering, identity verification, goods lost in transit, and returns as well as authenticate genuine customers making legitimate claims.
They can then make decisions in real time on whether there is a strong risk of identity theft, no intent to pay, a false goods lost in transit claim or another form of fraud.
Martin Spencer, finance manager of QVC UK, said the scheme was an "essential instrument" for establishing a best practice around fraud prevention.
"It is a solution that the whole sector could pick up on – to everyone in the industry’s advantage," he suggested.
With the backing from the likes of Shop Direct and QVC, TRADE brings together customer information from nine million UK households – 39 per cent of the marketplace.