Financial fraud is no more an isolated threat or predicament for enterprises; it is as sophisticated as the intertwined service ecosystems that are built upon the vast digital fabric that encompasses our society. Fraudsters today, in addition to wearing multiple hats of hackers and social engineers, have even spurred an underground network to trade intelligence, tactics, and vulnerabilities. ‘Fraudulence’ has grown beyond being a mere human trait, for, it can pretty much be coded into bots these days which makes it all the more difficult to track down culprits. The emergence of m-commerce, p2p payments systems, application fraud on automation and voice assistants are amongst the newer loopholes for fraud to thrive. This year, online fraud losses are projected to cross 30 bn dollars. In the context of online fraud, prevention is better than recovery. For enterprises, spotting camouflaged perpetrators from amongst the vast terrain of user bases may be beyond their capability to address singlehandedly. From financial feasibility as well as expertise standpoints, enterprises fall short of equipping themselves with fraud prevention tools that are best aligned to their unique client-facing processes. The need for a multi-pronged fraud prevention strategy and toolset has become more imperative than ever, especially for companies exploring newer use cases and customer engagement channels across the online realm.
Enterprises are increasingly investing in digital transformation; but being new to the online space, they fail to prepare for the onslaught of creative and sophisticated fraud they are going to face. “The next wave of fraud is already here, what we are seeing is confident, secure enterprises falling victim to fraud through mobile apps and online stores, to a degree that has not been seen since first big e-commerce and fraud wave of the early 2000,” says Bradley J. Wiskirchen, CEO of Kount, a premier provider of fraud management, identity verification and online authentication technologies.
“We give data that not only helps to fight fraud but also helps clients identify who their good potential customers are which ultimately enables upselling, cross-selling or reselling of products and services with confidence or even deliver tailored customer experience and rewards”
In an era of immense market competition on the digital front, offering impressive customer experience has become a paramount agenda of all companies alike. The foray of sophisticated fraud attacks has left enterprise leaders in dire need of a comprehensive and easy to implement strategy and toolsets to detect and deter fraud without compromising on user experience. With their solution stack, human expertise, and progressive technology outlook for fraud detection and prevention, Kount delivers to its clients, value, that transcends beyond fraud detection and prevention.
The Kount Factor
Kount has always been the front-line in the battle against online fraud. Since its inception, the company’s competitive edge, from other solution providers in the space, is how they strive to position themselves ahead in the ‘learning curve of technology innovations.’ Back when the share of mobile-based transactions was in single digit percentages, Kount, by accurately anticipating the breakthrough mobile devices can have on transactions, invested heavily on developing mobile SDK and compatible variants of their solution.
As a result of its new strategic stance, Kount’s clients seamlessly rolled mobility avatars of their web-based products and portal while they enjoyed assured immunity from fraud. Today, the veteran is relied and resorted upon by companies all over the world. Some of the big names such as PayPal and Chase Paymentech use Kount’s technology and expertise to shield themselves as well as their customers from fraud. Entities from industries ranging from apparels, travel and hospitality, online streaming, gaming and even telecommunications have partnered with Kount.
Furthermore, having been on the fraud-prevention battlefront for over a decade, Kount has ‘been-there; seen-it; and done that’. Today, the rich experience within its sleeve has ideally positioned Kount to adorn the hat of a consultant for their clients. Aspects of the company’s fraud management consulting services include machine learning, chargeback and fraud analysis, rules and policy optimization. “Many financial entities of all sizes with their respective traditional industries going through digital transformation come to us and ask assistance for use cases that did not exist previously. We can provide them the consultative advice as well as the technology platform to protect themselves,” says Rich L. Stuppy, Chief Customer Experience Officer (CCEO) at Kount.
By leveraging machine learning and behavioral biometric technologies, Kount continues to focus on building arsenals that are at par, from a prowess stance, to curb the ever germinating, ever advancing online-fraudulence. “What makes our AI solution superior to some of the other newcomers is we’ve powered and backed the technology with over ten years of data and human intelligence. Expert level guidance and informed business decision-making capabilities must be employed in tandem with cutting-edge, automatable technology algorithms. We are the only solution provider providing all of it without the need for on-premise software installation or months of training,” adds Brad. Behavioral Biometrics, on the other hand, has emerged as a promising tool to prevent automated or scripted deceptions. By identifying and mapping an individual’s unique method/pattern of login, the tech can detect bots in addition to fraudulent users. In tune to the market trends, needs, and customer types, Kount has intelligently packaged their robust technology stack into powerful SaaS packages.
Purpose-built Product Stack
KountComplete, the company’s core product is designed to protect any type or means of digital transactions be it through mobile, web, call centers or even Kiosks. The offering finds its ideal use of any kind of online merchants and retailers. “At whichever interaction point where our client cannot be physically present, we take in data, analyze it, and produce fraud scores using ML and biometric identification to detect, predict, and prevent fraud in real time,” mentions Brad. KountCentral is a dedicated fraud management solution stack for merchant aggregation points, such as payment processors, commerce platforms, and any business that serves of merchants through their platform, akin to online marketplaces. For merchants of all type and sizes, KountCentral lays on the table a broad portfolio of fraud with which they can design their fraud prevention strategies. KountAccess is a lightweight consumer-facing device centric specifically designed to prevent malicious actors from logging-in and accessing systems for creating fake accounts. It can even detect usage of stolen credential for account takeovers.
Kount also offers DataMart, which necessarily is an integrated business intelligence platform that enables clients to produce actionable reports on user interaction and transactional data collected by Kount’s product line. DataMart helps business go beyond fraud risk management by enabling them to create custom reports related to workflow, operations, user trends and staff workload and rule effectiveness to name a few.
All of Kount’s products have been designed to be as intuitive and easy to use or implement. For all of its clients, Kount provides dedicated account manager who helps them out to align the offerings in tune to their custom requirements and business strategy. From providing product training and technical level assistance for integration, Kount has a streamlined onboarding process. Also, Kount ensures that its product lines adhere strictly to new and any compliance mandate that trickles down from the regulatory authorities. After all, the law governing user data and privacy continue to evolve and has become more stringent than ever.
The Sales Enablement Sweet Spot
‘A good guard, in addition to keeping the bad entrants away, should be able to identify the potentially good ones.’ However, the perfection in the art of deception lies on how well fraudsters can pose to be the righteous, innocent, unsuspecting user who will do their service provider no harm. Kount has, by all means, mastered the ability to separate the ‘sharks’ from ‘whales’, as Brad puts it, ‘irrespective of how the former deceits as the latter’. The fodder to all of Kount’s robust, foolproof cutting-edge technologies is the data about user’s interaction and usage with the platform in question. Kount, in addition to being the fraud-filter of the data, also helps its clients scrutinize the data through the lens of sales enablement. For, a user’s behavior on the platform tells much about their purchasing intents and expectations. “We give data that not only helps to fight fraud but also helps clients identify who their good potential customers are which ultimately enables upselling, cross-selling or reselling of products and services with confidence or even deliver tailored customer experience and rewards,” adds Brad. As such, many clients relying on Kount for fraud prevention have also attained up to 30 percent increase in sales. Rich shares a few of Kount’s excellent customer success stories.
Exemplary Client Success Stories
Numbers speak for themselves; a leading online travel agency was able to achieve a 50 percent reduction in bookings declined for fraud prevention. They were also able to make a whopping 83 percent reduction in somebookings flagged for review. A leading fitness website was able to reduce chargeback by a factor of 65 percent while they simultaneously increased operational efficiency through Kount’s automated workflow tools. In yet another winning instance, a popular IT retailer reduced the need for manual transaction reviews by half and as well increased their online sales by 23 percent. “A company has even used Kount data to prevent human trafficking,” concludes Brad. Kount has mastered the expertise in rolling the fraud detection and prevention wheel; and rides miles ahead of its competitors.