How You and Your Business are Becoming Victims of Fraud and How to Fix It, with David Fletcher, SVP of ClearSale

Fraud has been a problem for centuries. And there have been bad actors and people with ill intent since the beginning of time. What’s different today is the tools and methods that fraudsters are using, particularly when it comes to perpetrating fraud online. Both consumers and brands are in a constant battle against hackers and fraudsters who are gaming and attacking their defenses and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars. So to protect themselves and their cus, brands are putting strategies in place to limit their exposure to risk and stop fraud before it starts. But not only will that defense not last long because fraudsters are always coming up with new ways to run their schemes, more often than not the defenses a company sets up create a bad user experience for the very customers they try to protect. 

David Fletcher is the Senior Vice President at ClearSale International, and he and his team are helping to create better solutions, fight fraud, and help ecommerce companies process more orders while giving users excellent experiences. He told me all about it on this episode of Up Next in Commerce, and there are some great ideas for any brand to think about implementing. But even more than that, David and I went deep on some of the other hot topics in the fraud and privacy world, including the debate around two-factor authentication and what’s happening on the dark web. It was so interesting. Enjoy!

Main Takeaways:

• Cutting Off Your Nose To Spite Your Face: One of the ways many companies fight fraud is through filters. If they see suspicious activity from a geographical location or type of customer profile, they set their system to automatically decline those sales in order to prevent fraud. However, in doing that, the company has set up a system that will generate false declines — declining legitimate sales based only on generic information that has been flagged. In order to truly fight fraud and not negatively impact other customers, companies need to be more specific and targeted with their efforts.
• The Unsolvable Problem of Fraud: No matter what you do to address fraud as it happens right now, there will always be new ways that fraud occurs as time goes by. It takes constant vigilance and attention to the environment you’re working in to stay ahead and protect your business and your customers. And while technology can help, having actual humans look into potentially risky transactions is the best way to identify what’s fraud and what’s not.
• Dig Into Data: By examining historical data, companies like ClearSale can get a full picture of how a company has operated and where its weak spots are when it comes to things like false declines and chargebacks, or other indicators of fraud. And from that data, you can almost immediately implement machine learning to improve your processes and get more orders approved.

For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.

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For a full transcript of this interview, click here.