Industry analyst names Kount an ‘established leader’ in fraud detection

Digital payments have become the leading payment option for consumers. They’re being processed at record numbers across channels. By 2025, digital wallet users will exceed 4.4 billion worldwide, up from 2.6 billion in 2020, Juniper Research predicts. But with such a significant increase in digital payments comes the parallel increase in payments fraud. As eCommerce ecosystems expand, fraud losses will exceed $52 billion by 2025, Juniper Research revealed in its Online Payment Fraud 2021-2025 report. The firm’s latest report takes a deep dive into key trends in digital fraud and fraud detection solutions. And it named Kount, an Equifax Company, an “established leader” in fraud detection and prevention. The firm's fraud detection and prevention leaderboard rated vendors on a scale of product and position and capability and capacity. Juniper scored Kount highly for its expansive capabilities and the breadth and depth of its product offerings, as well as for its operations and global reach, creativity and innovation, and future business prospects. Let's take a closer look at what makes Kount an industry leader for balancing customer experiences and fraud detection. How Kount balances frictionless customer experiences and fraud detection “The overlap in creating great customer experiences in payments and matching these to a secure experience is perhaps the greatest challenge of the industry,” the Juniper report stated. “Balancing security measures versus usability has always been a difficult objective across many sectors, but this goal is heightened by the focus of cybercrime on the payment sector.” The report found that fitting the human into payment fraud is a key trend in digital fraud. Essentially, bad actors use a mix of social strategies and technical tools to circumvent fraud protection. These strategies and tools range from social engineering and advanced persistent threats to malware and botnets. It’s up to businesses and merchants to prevent and combat these attacks without adding friction or compromising usability. Businesses need to create frictionless, secure customer experiences. That’s where a fraud solution like Kount comes in to minimize customer friction and maximize fraud detection. Kount balances fraud detection with frictionless customer experiences by helping businesses establish identity trust, create complete identity trust profiles, adapt friction to identity trust levels, and protect the entire customer journey. It uses a global data network to create complete identity trust profiles Kount’s Identity Trust Global NetworkTM helps businesses balance security and usability by giving them access to billions of fraud and trust signals. These signals help them marry physical and digital identity trust elements to create a complete identity trust profile. Kount’s is the largest data network of trust and fraud-related signals. The global network links signal data from billions of annual interactions across 250 countries and territories, over 75 industries, over 50 payment processors and card networks, and decisions from thousands of fraud analysts. This data helps businesses block low-trust events, welcome high-trust events, and learn more about their customers’ buying habits. Businesses that use Kount only stand to gain from the breadth and depth of data available through Kount and now Equifax. “What we see at Kount is a ‘heartbeat transaction,’ whereas Equifax often sees a ‘life event,” explained Vikram Dhawan, Kount’s Vice President and Senior Product Leader, in the Juniper report. “For example, you do not apply for a credit card every day, but you do buy coffee every day. Using these events and other behavioural factors — such as how you use your devices, where you live, etc. — the two pieces of the puzzle can link the physical and digital footprint of an identity, which can turn out to be a fraudulent identity.” It uses advanced AI and machine learning to link network data and establish identity trust “The modern-shaped vernacular is around the customer experience and building trust using identity,” Dhawan said. “A lot more CNP transactions were seen during the pandemic. This means that more data and behavioral change is feeding machine-learning models.” Kount’s advanced AI presents key benefits for businesses. It uses unsupervised and supervised machine learning to link global network data and establish identity trust for every event on an eCommerce website. Supervised machine learning learns from past decisions. Unsupervised machine learning detects emerging fraud. The symbiotic use of both forms of machine learning fraud detection, the Juniper report says, helps businesses better identify behavioural anomalies. As a result, businesses that use Kount can protect against new and existing fraud attacks and increase order acceptance rates. Plus, they can automate approve and decline decisions and customize risk thresholds to achieve desired business outcomes. It protects the entire customer journey From account creation and login to loyalty redemption and checkout, Kount uses its global network and advanced AI to protect the entire customer journey. When a user creates an account or attempts to sign in to a business’s website, Kount protects it from bad actors and rolls out the red carpet for good customers. For example, Kount analyzes whether an email address used in account creation is trustworthy or high risk. And it detects credential stuffing and password spraying as a result of malicious bot activity at login. Meanwhile, Kount uses Device Intelligence to recognize when returning customers are accessing accounts from trusted devices. And by preventing account takeover attacks, Kount keeps bad actors from committing loyalty fraud. Finally, when a user attempts to complete a transaction, Kount immediately evaluates the data and generates a safety rating: Omniscore. That safety rating flows through custom business policy thresholds, which Kount uses to automatically approve, decline, or hold the transaction for manual review. Good transactions get fast, frictionless checkout. Kount then adapts to block or challenge potentially fraudulent transactions with appropriate friction. When businesses use Kount to protect the entire customer journey, they can reduce manual reviews up to 83%, false positives up to 70%, and chargebacks up to 99%.