Fraudsters Meet their Match When it Comes to Chat

By guest author Hannes Van Rensburg, CCO at Clickatell

While our leaders focus their attention on keeping communities safe and businesses open, fraudsters have not gone away. In fact, many are using this time to wreak havoc. The U.S. Department of Justice warned that criminals are attempting to exploit COVID-19 worldwide through a variety of scams. News site Threatpost reports approximately 1.5 million coronavirus-themed attack emails occurred daily through mid-January through mid-April. Fortunately, many organizations making use of chat platforms are realising they can not only mitigate some of this risk but users will see benefits too.

We are all used to getting calls or messages from our banks to check if we have authorized payments that have been flagged as possible fraud. But dealing with support agents in call centers is not only inefficient, but costly for the bank and frustrating for the customer. Making use of chat to resolve fraud queries is a better option all round.

The inbuilt security of using a platform like WhatsApp, WeChat, and even Apple Business Chat helps engender user confidence. The green badge next to the number shows that the business contacting you has been verified and means communications can continue with confidence. It is much harder for malicious players to impersonate your bank or airline in a chat conversation.

Chat also helps companies to better understand customer behavior, especially when applying sophisticated machine learning or AI. In this way, companies can more accurately and efficiently authenticate customers better.

Some security benefits of chat include:

• User identity is known with a very high level of certainty.

• Biometric authentication based on users’ chat style can further increase security.

• Additional security questions can be captured via chat engagements.

All of this means that the fraud department can flag suspicious behavior with a high level of confidence.

What’s more, during high volume periods the chances of humans making an error are far higher than a chat bot which is relying on high levels of good user data. There is no doubt that authenticating a payment transaction in mobile chat is easier. It is non-intrusive and its efficacy is far higher than other channels. This is good for businesses and for users.

Get in touch with a Clickatell representative to find out how our platforms can enable you to improve fraud prevention support and service to your customers today.