Card Fraud: ECB Report and Orchestration as a Safety Tool

The Seventh Report on Card Fraud recently published by the European Central Bank (ECB) highlights that Card Not Present (CNP) transactions, especially cross-border, are still high-risk when it comes to fraud. On the other hand, local transactions have become increasingly more secure. BridgerPay, with its payment orchestration software, allows merchants to offer local payments methods anywhere in the world, greatly minimizing the risk of card fraud. This is only one of the many benefits of orchestrating your payments infrastructure. Read on to find out all the details.

International transactions are the biggest risk

The ECB found that in 2019 “fraudulent transactions using cards issued within SEPA and acquired worldwide amounted to €1.87 billion”, with a 3.4% growth in respect to 2018. Of these transactions, a whopping 80% came in the form of CNP, such as online and telephone. CNP losses to fraud went up by 4.3% compared to 2018. Additionally, 51% of reported fraud transactions were cross-border, accounting “for more than 90% of the total value of fraud” in 19 Member States. In several countries, cross-border fraud accounts for nearly 100% of all fraud!

ECB’s advice confirms BridgerPay’s position

In the report, the ECB states that “PSPs also need to go on fighting fraud and provide secure payment solutions to end-users. It is important for them to be supported in this by merchants, as they play a key role in the successful implementation of these solutions”. This statement perfectly agrees with BridgerPay’s philosophy. We make sure that all the PSPs we integrate adhere to the latest and most advanced security standards. In addition, we help merchants make their stores more trusted and secure by:

1. Offering only the best PSPs
2. Providing advanced and secure tokenization with BridgerSafe. This means that sensitive data never travels through the merchant’s servers, hence eliminating a point of risk
3. Allowing merchants to offer local payments methods worldwide, eliminating the risk posed by cross-border transactions, which “appear consistently more affected by fraud than domestic transactions”
4. Providing a PCI level 1 compliant checkout to everyone, that not only is state-of-the-art in terms of security, but is also customizable to any brand’s look and feel

Local payment methods are the most secure

One of the most important trends uncovered by the report was that “the majority of fraud related to cross-border transactions. However, the share of domestic fraud in the total value of fraudulent transactions was notably larger in earlier years, as the overall increase in the total value of fraud in recent years has been almost solely in cross-border transactions”.

Now, what a mouthful! What does it mean? Simple, for international businesses offering local payment methods is the best way to increase trust and give customers peace of mind. This is because local payment methods allow a versatile world of payment not based on credit card schemes (that is where most frauds take place). Most local PSPs connect directly to the user’s online banking, making every purchase:

• Immediate
• Safe
• Almost impossible to chargeback 

In past years, offering many local payment methods would have meant nightmares in terms of PSPs management, reporting, and integration. It would have also meant large amounts of money and time that could have been better spent elsewhere. Luckily, BridgerPay offers an all-in-one payment orchestration solution to integrate into your store all the PSPs you need and manage them from one dashboard, while maintaining an always consistent customer experience.

The bottom line

The Seventh Report on Card Fraud is an important one because it shows what we have to do to give users a secure environment where they can make transactions without having to worry about fraud. As businesses globalize and money consistently travels across borders, a payment orchestration software is a no-brainer for forward-looking companies that want to increase retention, strengthen trust, and boost revenue, while offering the best security and keeping costs and tech resource usage to a minimum.

Get in touch now and find out about all BridgerPay has to offer!